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HOUSE AND HOME 



PAPERS. 



By CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD. 



EIGHTH EDITION. 



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BOSTON: 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. 

1892. 



A 



Copyright, 1864 and 1892, . 
By HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge^ Mass.y U. S. A. 
Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. 



CONTENTS. 



Pagb 

I. The Ravages of a Carpet . . . i 

11. Home- Keeping vs. House- Keeping . 23 

III What is a Home? 48 

IV. The Economy of the Beautiful . 79 

V. Raking up the Fire loi 

VI. The Lady who does her own Work 125 
VII. What can be got in America . . .148 

V^III. Economy 164 

IX. Servants 195 

X. Cookery 225 

XI. Our House 266 

XI 1. Home Religion . . • • • 309 



House and Home Papers. 



I. 

THE RAVAGES OF A CARPET. 

« TV /r Y dear, it 's so cheap ! " 

XVX These words were spoken by my wife, as 
she sat gracefully on a roll of Brussels carpet which 
was spread out in flowery lengths on the floor of 
Messrs. Ketchem & Co. 

*' It 's so cheap ! " 

Milton says that the love of fame is the last in- 
firmity of noble minds. I think he had not rightly 
considered the subject. I believe that last infirmity 
is the love of getting things cheap ! Understand me, 
now. I don't mean the love of getting cheap things, 
by which one understands showy, trashy, ill-made, 
spurious articles, bearing certain apparent resem- 
blances to better things. All really sensible people 
are quite superior to that sort of cheapness. But 
those fortunate accidents which put within the power 
of a man things really good and valuable for half or 
a third of their value what mortal virtue and resolu- 



2 House and Home Papers, 

tion can withstand ? My friend Brown has a genuine 
Murillo, the joy of his heart and the light of his eyes, 
but he never fails to tell you, as its crowning merit, 
how he bought it in South America for just nothing, 
— how it hung smoky and deserted in the back of a 
counting-room, and was thrown in as a makeweight to 
bind a bargain, and, upon being cleaned, turned out 
a genuine Murillo ; and then he takes out his cigar, 
and calls your attention to the points in it ; he adjusts 
the curtain to let the sunlight fall just in the right 
spot ; he takes you to this and the other point of 
view ; and all this time you must confess, that, in 
your mind as well as his, the consideration that he 
got all this beauty for ten dollars adds lustre to the 
painting. Brown has paintings there for which he 
paid his thousands, and, being well advised, they are 
worth the thousands he paid ; but this ewe-lamb that 
he got for nothing always gives him a secret exaltation 
in his own eyes. He seems to have credited to him- 
self personally merit to the amount of what he should 
have paid for the picture. Then there is Mrs. Croesus, 
at the party yesterday evening, expatiating to my wife 
on the surprising cheapness of her point-lace set, — 
" Got for just nothing at all, my dear ! " and a circle 
of admiring listeners echoes the sound. " Did you 
ever hear anything like it ? I never heard of such a 
thing in my life " ; and away sails Mrs. Croesus as if 



The Ravages of a Carpet. 3 

she had a collar composed of all the cardinal virtues. 
In fact, she is buoyed up with a secret sense of merit, 
so that her satin slippers scarcely touch the carpet. 
Even I myself am fond of showing a first edition of 
" Paradise Lost," for which I gave a shilling in a 
London book-stall, and stating that I would not take 
a hundred dollars for it. Even I must confess there 
are points on which I am mortal. 

But all this while my wife sits on her roll of carpet, 
looking into my face for approbation, and Marianne 
and Jenny are pouring into my ear a running-fire 
of " How sweet ! How lovely ! Just like that one 
of Mrs. Tweedleum's ! " 

" And she gave two dollars and seventy-five cents a 
yard for hers, and this is — " 

My wife here put her hand to her mouth, and 
pronounced the incredible sum in a whisper, with a 
species of sacred awe, common, as I have observed, 
to females in such interesting crises. In fact, Mr. 
Ketchem, standing smiling and amiable by, remarked 
to me that really he hoped Mrs. Crowfield would not 
name generally what she gave for the article, fox posi- 
tively it was so far below the usual rate of prices that 
he might give offence to other customers ; but this 
was the very last of the pattern, and they were anx- 
ious to close off the old stock, and we had always 
traded with thein, and he had a great respect for my 



4 House and Home Papers, 

wife's father, who had always traded with theii firm, 
and so, when there were any little bargains to be 
thrown in any one's way, why, he naturally, of 
course — And here Mr. Ketchem bowed grace- 
fully over the yardstick to my wife, and I con- 
sented. 

Yes, I consented; but whenever I think of my- 
self at that moment, I always am reminded, in a 
small way, of Adam taking the apple ; and my wife, 
seated on that roll of carpet, has more than once 
suggested to my mind the classic image of Pandora 
opening her unlucky box. In fact, from the moment 
I had blandly assented to Mr. Ketchem's remarks, 
and said to my wife, with a gentle air of dignity, 
*^Well, my dear, since it suits you, I think you had 
better take it," there came a load on my prophetic 
soul, which not all the fluttering and chattering of 
my delighted girls and the more placid complacency 
of my wife could entirely dissipate. I presaged, I 
know not what, of coming woe ; and all I presaged 
came to pass. 

In order to know just what came to pass, I must 
give you a view of the house and home into which 
this carpet was introduced. 

My wife and I were somewhat advanced house- 
keepers, and our dwelling was first furnished by her 
father, in the old-fashioned jog-trot days, when fur- 



The Ravages of a Carpet. 5 

niture was made with a view to its lasting from gen- 
eration to generation. Everything was strong and 
comfortable, — heavy mahogany, guiltless of the mod- 
ern device of veneering, and hewed out with a square 
solidity which had not an idea of change. It was, 
so to speak, a sort of granite foundation of the house- 
hold structure. Then, we commenced housekeeping 
with the full idea that our house was a thing to be 
lived in, and that furniture was made to be used. 
That most sensible of women, Mrs. Crowfield, agreed 
fully with me, that in our house there was to be noth- 
ing too good for ourselves, — no rooms shut up in 
holiday attire to be enjoyed by strangers for three 
or four days in the year, while we lived in holes and 
corners, — no best parlor from which we were to be 
excluded, — no silver plate to be kept in the safe in 
the bank, and brought home only in case of a grand 
festival, while our daily meals were served with dingy 
Britannia. "Strike a broad, plain average," I said 
to my wife ; " have everything abundant, serviceable ; 
and give all our friends exactly what we have our- 
selves, no better and no worse " ; — and my wife 
smiled approval on my sentiment. 

Smile ! she did more than smile. My wife resem- 
bles one of those convex mirrors I have sometimes 
seen. Every idea I threw out, plain and simple, she 
reflected back upon me in a thousand little glitters 



6 Hou^e and Home Papers, 

and twinkles of her own ; she made my crude con- 
ceptions come back to me in such perfectly dazzling 
performances that I hardly recognized them. My 
mind warms up, when I think what a home that wo- 
man made of our house from the very first day she 
moved into it. The great, large, airy parlor, with its 
ample bow-window, when she had arranged it, seemed 
a perfect trap to catch sunbeams. There was none 
of that discouraging trimness and newness that often 
repel a man's bachelor-friends after the first call, and 
make them feel, — " O, well, one cannot go in at 
Crowfield's now, unless one is dressed; one might 
put them out.'' The first thing our parlor said to 
any one was, that we were not people to be put out, 
that we were wide-spread, easy-going, and jolly folk. 
Even if Tom Brown brought in Ponto and his shoot- 
ing-bag, there was nothing in that parlor to strike 
terror into man and dog; for it was written on the 
face of things, that everybody there was to do just 
as he or she pleased. There were my books and 
my writing-table spread out with all its miscellaneous 
confusion of papers on one side of the fireplace, and 
there were my wife's great, ample sofa and work-table 
on the other; there I wrote my articles for the 
" North American," and there she turned and ripped 
and altered her dresses, and there lay crochet and 
knitting and embroidery side by side with a weekly 



The Ravages of a Carpet, 7 

basket of family-mending, and in neighborly contigu- 
ity with the last book of the season, which my wife 
turned over as she took her after-dinner lounge on 
the sofa. And in the bow-window were canaries 
always singing, and a great stand of plants always 
fresh and blooming, and ivy which grew and clam- 
bered and twined about the pictures. Best of all, 
there was in our parlor that household altar, the 
blazing wood-fire, whose wholesome, hearty crackle 
is the truest household inspiration. I quite agree 
with one celebrated American author who holds that 
an open fireplace is an altar of patriotism. Would 
our Revolutionary fathers have gone barefooted and 
bleeding over snows to defend air-tight stoves and 
cooking-ranges ? I trow not. It was the memory of 
the great open kitchen-fire, with its back-log and fore- 
stick of cord-wood, its roaring, hilarious voice of 
invitation, its dancing tongues of flame, that called 
to them through the snows of that dreadful winter to 
keep up their courage, that made their hearts warm 
and bright with a thousand reflected memories. Our 
neighbors said that it was delightful to sit by our fire, 
— but then, for their part, they could not aflbrd it, 
wood was so ruinously dear, and all that. Most of 
these people could not, for the simple reason that 
they felt compelled, in order to maintain the family- 
dignity, to keep up a parlor with great pomp and 



8 House and Home Papers, 

circumstance of upholstery, where they sat only on 
dress-occasions, and of course the wood-fire was out 
of the question. 

When children began to make their appearance in 
our establishment, my wife, like a well-conducted 
housekeeper, had the best of nursery-arrangements, 
— a room all warmed, lighted, and ventilated, and 
abounding in every proper resource of amusement to 
the rising race ; but it was astonishing to see how, 
notwithstanding this, the centripetal attraction drew 
every pair of little pattering feet to our parlor. 

"My dear, why don't you take your blocks up- 
stairs?" 

" I want to be where oo are," said with a piteous 
under-lip, was generally a most convincing answer. 

Then the small people could not be disabused of 
the idea that certain chief treasures of their own 
would be safer under papa's writing-table or mamma's 
sofa than in the safest closet of their own domains. 
My writing-table was dock-yard for Arthur's new 
ship, and stable for little Tom's pepper-and-salt-col- 
ored pony, and carriage-house for Charley's new 
wagon, while whole armies of paper-dolls kept house 
in the recess behind mamma's sofa. 

And then, in due time, came the tribe of pets who 
followed the little ones and rejoiced in the blaze of 
the firelight. The boys had a splendid Newfound- 



The Ravages of a Carpet, 9 

land, which, knowing our weakness, we warned them 
with awful gravity was never to be a parlor dog ; but, 
somehow, what with little beggings and pleadings on 
the part of Arthur and Tom, and the piteous melan- 
choly with which Rover would look through the win- 
dow-panes, when shut out from the blazing warmth 
into the dark, cold, veranda, it at last came to pass 
that Rover gained a regular corner at the hearth, a 
regular status in every family-convocation. And then 
came a little black-and-tan English terrier for the 
girls ; and then a fleecy poodle, who established him- 
self on the comer of my wife's sofa ; and for each of 
these some little voices pleaded, and some little heart 
would be so near broken at any slight, that my wife 
and I resigned ourselves to live in menagerie, the more 
so as we were obliged to confess a lurking weakness 
towards these four-footed children ourselves. 

So we grew and flourished together, — children, 
dogs, birds, flowers, and all ; and although my wife 
often, in paroxysms of housewifeliness to which the 
best of women are subject, would declare that we 
never were fit to be seen, yet I comforted her with 
the reflection that there were few people whose 
friends seemed to consider them better worth seeing, 
judging by the stream of visitors and loungers which 
was always setting towards our parlor. People 
seemed to find it good to be there ; they said i\ 



lO House and Home Papers. 

was somehow home-like and pleasant, and that there 
was a kind of charm about it that made it easy to 
talk and easy to live ; and as my girls and boys grew 
up, there seemed always to be some merry doing or 
o'her going on there. Arty and Tom brought home 
thv^ir college friends, who straightway took root there 
and seemed to fancy themselves a part of us. We 
had no reception-rooms apart, where the girls were 
to receive young gentlemen ; all the courting and 
flirting that were to be done had for their arena the 
ample variety of surface presented by our parlor, 
which, with sofas and screens and lounges and re- 
cesses and writing- and work-tables, disposed here 
and there, and the genuine laisser alter of the whole 
menage^ seemed, on the whole, to have offered ample 
advantages enough; for, at the time I write of, two 
daughters were already established in marriage, while 
my youngest was busy, as yet, in performing that 
little domestic ballet of the cat with the mouse, in 
the case of a most submissive youth of the neigh- 
borhood. 

All this time our parlor-furniture, though of that 
granitic formation I have indicated, began to show 
marks of that decay to which things sublunary are 
liable. I cannot say that I dislike this look in a 
room. Take a fine, ample, hospitable apartment, 
vhere all things, freely and generously used, softly 



The Ravages of a Carpet, 1 1 

and indefinably grow old together, there is a sort of 
mellow tone and keeping which pleases my eye. 
What if the seams of the great inviting arm-chair, 
whe^e so many friends have sat and lounged, do grow 
white ? AVhat, in fact, if some easy couch has an un- 
deniable hole worn in its friendly cover? I regard 
with tenderness even these mortal weaknesses of 
these servants and witnesses of our good times and 
social fellowship. No vulgar touch wore them ; they 
may be called, rather, the marks and indentations 
which the glittering in and out of the tide of social 
happiness has worn in the rocks of our strand. I 
would no more disturb the gradual toning-down and 
aging of a well-used set of furniture by smart improve- 
ments than I would have a modern dauber paint in 
emendations in a fine old picture. 

So we men reason ; but women do not always 
think as we do. There is a virulent demon of house- 
keeping, not wholly cast out in the best of them, and 
which often breaks out in unguarded moments. In 
fact. Miss Marianne, being on the lookout for furni- 
ture wherewith to begin a new establishment, and 
Jenny, who had accompanied her in her peregrina- 
tions, had more than once thrown out little dispar- 
aging remarks on the time-worn appearance of our 
establishment, suggesting comparison with those of 
more modern-furnished rooms. 



12 House and Home Papers, 

" It is positively scandalous, the way our furniture 
looks," I one day heard one of them declaring to her 
mother \ " and this old rag of a carpet ! " 

My feelings were hurt, not the less so that I knew 
that the large cloth which covered the middle of the 
floor, and which the women call a booking, had been 
bought and nailed down there, after a solemn family- 
counsel, as the best means of concealing the too evi- 
dent darns which years of good cheer had made need- 
ful in our stanch old household friend, the three-ply 
carpet, made in those days when to be a three-ply wa^ 
a pledge of continuance and service. 

Well, it was a joyous and bustling day, when, after 
one of those domestic whirlwinds which the womep 
are fond of denominating house-cleaning, the new 
Brussels carpet was at length brought in and nailed 
down, and its beauty praised from mouth to mouth. 
Our old friends called in and admired, and all seemed 
to be well, except that I had that light and delicate 
presage of changes to come which indefinitely brooded 
over me. 

The first premonitory symptom was the look of 
apprehensive suspicion with which the female senate 
regarded the genial sunbeams that had always glori- 
fied our bow-window. 

"This house ought to have inside blinds," said 
Marianne, with all the confident decision of youth ^ 



The Ravages of a Carpet. 13 

•* this cavpet will be ruined, if the sun is allowed to 
come in like that." 

" And that dirty little canary must really be hung 
in the kitchen," said Jenny ; " he always did make 
such a litter, scattering his seed-chippings about ; and 
he never takes his bath without flirting out some 
water. And, mamma, it appears to me it will never 
do to have the plants here. Plants are always either 
leaking through the pots upon the carpet, or scatter- 
ing bits of blossoms and dead leaves, or some acci- 
dent upsets or breaks a pot. It was no matter, you 
know, when we had the old carpet ; but this we really 
want to have kept nice." 

Mamma stood her ground for the plants, — dar- 
lings of her heart for many a year, — but temporized, 
and showed that disposition towards compromise 
which is most inviting to aggression. 

I confess I trembled ; for, of all radicals on earth, 
none are to be compared to females that have once 
in hand a course of domestic innovation and reform. 
The sacred fire, the divine furor, burns in their bo- 
soms, they become perfect Pythonesses, and every 
chair they sit on assumes the magic properties of che 
tripod. Hence the dismay that lodges in the bosoms 
of us males at the fateful spring and autumn seasons, 
denominated house-cleanmg. Who can say whither 
the awful gods, the prophetic fates, may drive qui 



14 House and Home Papers, 

fair household divinities ; what sins of ours may be 
brought to light ; what indulgences and compliances, 
which uninspired woman has granted in her ordinary 
mortal hours, may be torn from us? He who has 
been allowed to keep a pair of pet slippers in a con- 
cealed corner, and by the fireside indulged with a 
chair which he might, ad libitum^ fill with all sorts of 
pamphlets and miscellaneous literature, suddenly finds 
himself reformed out of knowledge, his pamphlets 
tucked away into pigeon-holes and corners, and his 
slippers put in their place in the hall, with, perhaps, a 
brisk insinuation about the shocking dust and dis- 
order that men will tolerate. 

The fact was, that the very first night after the 
advent of the new carpet I had a prophetic dream. 
Among our treasures of art was a little etching, by an 
English artist-friend, the subject of which was the 
gambols of the household fairies in a baronial library 
after the household were in bed. The little people 
are represented in every attitude of firolic enjoyment. 
Some escalade the great arm-chair, and look down 
from its top as from a domestic Mont Blanc ; some 
climb about the bellows ; some scale the shaft of the 
shovel ; while some, forming in magic ring, dance 
festively on the yet glowing hearth. Tiny troops 
promenade the writing-table. One perches himself 
quaintly on the top of the inkstand, and holds col- 



The Ravages of a Carpet. IS 

loquy with anothel who sits cross-legged on a paper- 
weight, while a companion looks down on them from 
the top of the sand-box. It was an ingenious little 
device, and gave me the idea, which I often expressed 
to my wife, that much of the peculiar feeling of se- 
curity, composure, and enjoyment which seems to be 
the atmosphere of some rooms and houses came from 
the unsuspected presence of these little people, the 
household fairies, so that the belief in their existence 
became a solemn article of faith with me. 

Accordingly, that evening, after the installation of 
the carpet, when my wife and daughters had gone to 
bed, as I sat with my slippered feet before the last 
coals of the fire, I fell asleep in my chair, and, lo ! 
my own parlor presented to my eye a scene of busy 
life. The little people in green were tripping to 
and fro, but in great confusion. Evidently something 
was wrong among them ; for they were fussing and 
chattering with each other, as if preparatory to a gen- 
eral movement. In the region of the bow-window I 
observed a tribe of them standing with tiny valises 
and carpet-bags in their hands, as though about to 
depart on a journey. On my writing-table another set 
stood around my inkstand and pen-rack, who, point- 
ing to those on the floor, seemed to debate some 
question among themselves ; while others of them 
appeared to be collecting and packing away in tiny 



1 6 House and Home Papers 

trunks certain fairy treasures, preparatory to a general 
departure. When I looked at the social hearth, at my 
wife's sofa and work-basket, I saw similar appear- 
ances of dissatisfaction and confusion. It was evi- 
dent that the household fairies were discussing the 
question of a general and simultaneous removal. I 
groaned in spirit, and, stretching out my hand, began 
a conciliatory address, when whisk went the whole 
scene from before my eyes, and I awaked to behold 
the form of my wife asking me if I were ill or had 
had the nightmare that I groaned so. I told her 
my dream, and we laughed at it together. 

" We must give way to the girls a little," she said. 
" It is natural, you know, that they should wfsh us to 
appear a little as other people do. The fact is, our 
parlor is somewhat dilapidated ; think how many years 
we have lived in it without an article of new furni- 
ture." 

" I hate new furniture," I remarked, in the bitter- 
ness of my soul. " I hate anything new." 

My wife answered me discreetly, according to ap- 
proved principles of diplomacy. I was right She 
sympathized with me. At the same time, it was not 
necessary, she remarked, that we should keep a hole 
in our sofa-cover and arm-chair ; there would certainly 
be no harm in sending them to the upholsterer's to 
be new^ covered ; she did n't much mind, for her part, 



The Ravages of a Carpet. 17 

moving her plants to the south back-room, and the 
bird would do well enough in the kitchen : I had 
often complained of him for singing vociferously when 
I was reading aloud. 

So our sofa went to the upholsterer's ; but the up- 
holsterer was struck with such horror at its clumsy, 
antiquated, unfashionable appearance, that he felt 
bound to make representations to my wife and daugh- 
ters : positively, it would be better for them to get a 
new one, of a tempting pattern, which he showed them, 
than to try to do anything with that. With a stitch or 
so here and there it might do for a basement dining- 
room ; but, for a parlor, he gave it as his disinterested 
opinion, — he must say, if the case were his own, he 
should get, etc., etc. In short, we had a new sofa and 
new chairs, and the plants and the birds were ban- 
ished, and some dark green blinds were put up to 
exclude the sun from the parlor, and the blessed lumi- 
nary was allowed there only at rare intervals, when my 
wife and daughters were out shopping, and I acted 
out my uncivilized male instincts by pulling up every 
shade and vivifying the apartment as in days of old. 

But this was not the worst of it. The new furniture 
and new carpet formed an opposition party in the 
room. I believe in my heart that for every little 
household fairy that went out with the dear old things 
there came in a tribe of discontented brownies with 

B 



1 8 House and Home Papers. 

the new ones. These little wretches were always 
twitching at the gowns of my wife and daughters, jog- 
ging their elbows, and suggesting odious comparisons 
between the smart new articles and what remained of 
the old ones. They disparaged my writing-table in 
the corner ; they disparaged the old-fashioned lounge 
in the other comer, which had been the maternal 
throne for years ; they disparaged the work-table, the 
work-basket, with constant suggestions of how such 
things as these would look in certain well-kept parlors 
where new-fashioned furniture of the same sort as 
ours existed. 

" We don't have any parlor," said Jenny, one day. 
" Our parlor has always been a sort of log-cabin, — 
library, study, nursery, greenhouse, all combined. We 
never have had things like other people." 

" Yes, and this open fire makes such a dust ; and 
this carpet is one that shows every speck of dust ; it 
keeps one always on the watch." 

" I wonder why papa never had a study to himself ; 
I *m sure I should think he would like it better than 
sitting here among us all. Now there *s the great 
south-room off the dining-room ; if he would only 
move his things there, and have his open fire, we 
could then close up the fireplace, and put lounges in 
the recesses, and mamma could have her things in the 
nursery, — and then we should have a parlor fit to be 
seen." 



The Ravages of a Carpet. 19 

I overheard all this, though I pretended not to, — 
the little busy chits supposing me entirely buried in 
the recesses of a GermaPx book over v:hich I was 
poring. 

There are certain crises in a man's life when the 
female element in his household asserts itself in domi- 
nant forms that seem to threaten to overwhelm him. 
The fair creatures, who in most matters have depended 
on his judgment, evidently look upon him at these 
seasons as only a forlorn, incapable male creature, to 
be cajoled and flattered and persuaded out of his 
native blindness and absurdity into the fairy-land of 
their wishes. 

" Of course, mamma," said the busy voices, " men 
can't understand such things. What can men know of 
housekeeping, and how things ought to look ? Papa 
never goes into company; he don't know and don't 
care how the world is doing, and don't see that no- 
body now is living as we do." 

'^ Aha, my little mistresses, are you there ? '* I 
thought ; and I mentally resolved on opposing a 
great force of what our politicians call backbone to 
this pretty domestic conspiracy. 

" When you get my writing-table out of this corner, 
my pretty dears, I 'd thank you to let me know it." 

Thus spake I in my blindness, fool that I was. 
Jupiter might as soon keep awake, when Juno came 



20 House and Home Papers, 

in best bib and tucker, and with the cestus of Venus, 
to get him to sleep. Poor Slender might as well hope 
to get the better of pretty Mistress Anne Page, as one 
of us clumsy-footed men might endeavor to escape 
from the tangled labyrinth of female wiles. 

In short, in less than a year it was all done, without 
any quarrel, any noise, any violence, — done, I scarce 
knew when or how, but with the utmost deference to 
my wishes, the most amiable hopes that I would not 
put myself out, the most sincere protestations that, if 
I liked it better as it was, my goddesses would give 
up and acquiesce. In fact, I seemed to do it of my- 
self, constrained thereto by what the Emperor Napo- 
leon has so happily called the logic of events, — that 
old, well-known logic by which the man who has once 
said A must say B, and he who has said B must say 
the whole alphabet. In a year, we had a parlor with 
two lounges in decorous recesses, a fashionable sofa, 
and six chairs and a looking-glass, and a grate always 
shut up, and a hole in the floor which kept the parlor 
warm, and great, heavy curtains that kept out all the 
light that was not already excluded by the green 
shades. 

It was as proper and orderly a parlor as those of 
our most fashionable neighbors ; and when our friends 
called, we took them stumbling into its darkened soli- 
tude, and opened a faint crack in one of the window* 



The Ravages of a Carpet. 21 

shades, and came down in our best clothes, and talked 
with them there. Our old friends rebelled at this, 
and asked what they had done to be treated so, and 
complained so bitterly that gradually we let them into 
the secret that there was a great south-room which I 
had taken for my study, where we all sat, where the 
old carpet was down, where the sun shone in at the 
great window, where my wife's plants flourished and 
the canary-bird sang, and my wife had her sofa in the 
corner, and the old brass andirons glistened and the 
wood-fire crackled, — in short, a room to which all the 
household fairies had emigrated. 

When they once had found that out, it was difficult 
to get any of them to sit in our parlor. I had pur- 
posely christened the new room my study ^ that I might 
stand on my rights as master of ceremonies there, 
though I opened wide arms of welcome to any who 
chose to come. So, then, it would often come to pass, 
that, when we were sitting round the fire in my study 
of an evening, the girls would say, — 

"Come, what do we always stay here for? Why 
dcn't we ever sit in the parlor?" 

And then there would be manifested among guests 
and family-friends a general unwillingness to move. 

" O, hang it, girls ! " would Arthur say ; " the parlor 
is well enough, all right ; let it stay as it is, and let 
a fellow stay where he can do as he pleases and feels 



22 House and Home Papers, 

at home '' ; and to this view of the matter would 
respond divers of the nice 3'^oung bachelors who were 
Arthur's and Tom's sworn friends. 

In fact, nobody wanted to stay in our parlor now. 
It was a cold, correct, accomplished fact ; the house- 
hold fairies had left it, — and when the fairies leave a 
room, nobody ever feels at home in it. No pictures, 
curtains, no wealth of mirrors, no elegance of lounges, 
can in the least make up for their absence. They are 
a capricious little set ; there are rooms where they will 
not stay, and rooms where they will ; but no one caL 
ever have a good time without them. 



II. 

HOME-KEEPING vs. HOUSE-KEEPING. 

I AM a frank, open-hearted man, as, perhaps, you 
have by this time perceived, and you will not, 
therefore, be surprised to know that I read my last 
article on the carpet to my wife and the girls before 
I sent it to the " Atlantic," and we had a hearty laugh 
over it together. My wife and the girls, in fact, felt 
that they could afford to laugh, for they had carried 
their point, their reproach among women was taken 
away, they had become like other folks. Like other 
folks they had a parlor, an undeniable best parlor, 
shut up and darkened, with all proper carpets, cur- 
tains, lounges, and marble-topped tables, too good for 
human nature's daily food ; and being sustained by 
this consciousness, they cheerfully went on receiving 
their friends in the study, and having good times in 
the old free-and-easy way; for did not everybody 
know that this room was not their best ? and if the 
furniture was old-fashioned and a little the worse for 
antiquity, was it not certain that they had better, which 
they could use, if they would ? 



24 House and Home Papers. 

"And supposing we wanted to give a party," said 
Jenny, " how nicely our parlor would light up ! Not 
that we ever do give parties, but if we should, — and 
for a wedding-reception, you know." 

I felt the force of the necessity ; it was evident 
that the four or five hundred extra which we had 
expended was no more than such solemn possibili- 
ties required. 

" Now, papa thinks we have been foolish," said 
Marianne, " and he has his own way of making a 
good story of it ; but, after all, I desire to know if 
people are never to get a new carpet. Must we keep 
the old one till it actually wears to tatters ? " 

This is a specimen of the reductio ad absurdum 
which our fair antagonists of the other sex are fond 
of employing. They strip what we say of all delicate 
shadings and illusory phrases, and reduce it to some 
bare question of fact, with which they make a home- 
thrast at us. 

'' Yes, that 's it ; are people never to get a new car- 
pet } " echoed Jenny. 

*-' My dears," I replied, "it is a fact that to introduce 
anything new into an apartment hallowed by many 
home-associations, where all things have grown old 
together, requires as much care atid adroitness as 
for an architect to restore an arch or niche in a fine 
old ruin. The fault of our carpet was that it was in 



Home-Keeping vs. House-Keeping, 25 

mother style from everything in our room, and made 
everything in it look dilapidated. Its colors, material, 
smd air belonged to another manner of life, and were 
a constant plea for alterations ; and you see it actu- 
ally drove out and expelled the whole furniture of the 
room, and I am not sure yet that it may not entail on 
us the necessity of refurnishing the whole house." 

" My dear ! " said my wife, in a tone of remon- 
strance ; but Jane and Marianne laughed and col- 
ored. 

"Confess, now," said I, looking at them, "have 
you not had secret designs on the hall- and stair- 
carpet ? " 

" Now, papa, how could you know it ? I only said 
to Marianne that to have Brussels in the parlor and 
that old mean-looking ingrain carpet in the hall did 
aot seem exactly the thing ; and, in fact, you know, 
(namma, Messrs. Ketchem & Co. showed us such a 
lovely pattern, designed to harmonize with our parlor- 
carpet." 

" I know it, girls," said my wife ; " but you know 
[ said at once that such an expense was not to be 
diought of." 

" Now, girls," said I, " let me tell you a story I 
leard once of a very sensible old New England min- 
ster, who lived, as our country ministers generally do, 
ather near to the bone, but still quite contentedly. It 



26 House and Home Papers. 

was in the days when knee-breeches and long stock- 
ings were worn, and this good man was offered a 
present of a very nice pair of black silk hose. He 
declined, saying, he ' could not afford to wear them.' 

" ^ Not afford it ? ' said the friend ; * why, I give 
them to you/ 

" ' Exactly ; but it will cost me not less than two 
hundred dollars to take them, and I cannot do it/ 

"'How is that?' 

" < Why, in the first place, I shall no sooner put 
them on than my wife will say, " My dear, you must 
have a new pair of knee-breeches," and I shall get 
them. Then my wife will say, " My dear, how 
shabby your coat is ! You must have a new one," 
and I shall get a new coat. Then she will say, 
" Now, my dear, that hat will never do," and then 
I shall have a new hat ; and then I shall say, " My 
dear, it will never do for me to be so fine and you to 
wear your old gown," and so my wife will get a new 
gown j and then the new gown will require a new 
shawl and a new bonnet j all of which we shall not 
feel the need of, if I don't take this pair of silk stock- 
ings, for, as long as we don't see them, our old things 
seem very well suited to each other.' " 

The girls laughed at this story, and I then added, 
in my most determined manner, — 

" But I must warn you, girls, that I have compro 



Home-Keeping vs. House-Keeping, 2) 

mised to the utmost extent of my power, and that I 
intend to plant myself on the old stair-carpet in deter- 
mined resistance. I have no mind to be forbidden 
the use of the front-stairs, or condemned to get up 
into my bedroom by a private ladder, as I should be 
immediately, if there were a new carpet down." 

"Why, papa!" 

" Would it not be so ? Can the sun shine in the 
parlor now for fear of fading the carpet ? Can we 
keep a fire there for fear of making dust, or use the 
lounges and sofas for fear of wearing them out ? If 
you got a new entry- and stair-carpet, as I said, I 
should have to be at the expense of another stair- 
case to get up to our bedroom." 

" O no, papa," said Jane, innocently ; " there are 
very pretty druggets, now, for covering stair-carpets, 
so that they can be used without hurting them." 

" Put one over the old carpet, then," said I, " and 
our acquaintance will never know but it is a new 
one." 

All the female senate laughed at this proposal, and 
said it sounded just like a man. 

" Well," said I, standing up resolutely for my sex, 
" a man's ideas on woman's matters may be worth 
some attention. I flatter myself that an intelligent, 
educated man does n't think upon and observe with 
interest any particular subject for years of his life 



28 House and Home Papers. 

without gaining some ideas respecting it that are good 
for something ; at all events, I have written another 
article for the ' Atlantic,' which I will read to you." 

*' Well, wait one minute, papa, till we get our work," 
said the girls, who, to say the truth, always exhibit a 
flattering interest in anything their papa writes, and 
who have the good taste never to interrupt his read- 
ings with any conversations in an undertone on cross- 
stitch and floss-silks, as the manner of some is. Hence 
the little feminine bustle of arranging all these matters 
beforehand. Jane, or Jenny, as I call her in my 
good-natured moods, put on a fresh clear stick of 
hickory, of that species denominated shagbark, which 
is full of most charming slivers, burning with such a 
clear flame, and emitting such a delicious perfume 
in burning, that I would not change it with the mil- 
lionnaire who kept up his fire with cinnamon. 

You must know, my dear Mr. Atlantic, and you, 
my confidential friends of the reading public, that 
there is a certain magic or spiritualism which I have 
the knack of in regard to these mine articles, in vir- 
tue of which my wife and daughters never hear or 
see the little personalities respecting them which form 
paits of my papers. By a peculiar arrangement which 
I have made with the elves of the inkstand and the 
familiar spirits of the quill, a sort of glamour falls 
on their eyes acd ears when I am reading, or when 



Hom^ 'Keeping vs. House-Keeping. 29 

they itad the parts personal to themselves ; otherwise 
their sense of feminine propriety would be shocked at 
the free way in which they and their most internal 
affairs are confidentially spoken of between me and 
you, O loving readers. 

Thus, in an undertone, I tell you that my little 
Jenny, as she is zealously and systematically arrang- 
ing the fire, and trimly whisking every untidy particle 
of ashes from the hearth, shows in every movement 
of her little hands, in the cock of her head, in the 
knowing, observing glance of her eye, and in all her 
energetic movements, that her small person is endued 
and made up of the very expressed essence of house- 
wifeliness, — she is the very attar, not of roses, but of 
housekeeping. Care-taking and thrift and neatness 
are a nature to her ; she is as dainty and delicate 
in her person as a white cat, as everlastingly busy as a 
bee ; and all the most needful faculties of time, weight, 
measure, and proportion ought to be fully developed 
in her skull, if there is any truth in phrenology. Be- 
sides all this, she has a sort of hard-grained little vein 
of common sense, against which my fanciful concep- 
tions and poetical notions are apt to hit with just a 
Uttle sharp grating, if they are not well put. In fact, 
this kind of woman needs carefully to be idealized in 
the process of education, or she will stiffen and dry. 
as she grows old, into a veritable household Pharisee. 



30 House and Home Papers, 

a sort of domestic tyrant. She needs to be trained in 
artistic values and artistic weights and measures, to 
study all the arts and sciences of the beautiful, and 
then she is charming. Most useful, most needful, 
these little women : they have the centripetal force 
which keeps all the domestic planets from gyrating 
and frisking in unseemly orbits, — and properly trained, 
thev fill a house with the beauty of order, the harmony 
and consistency of proportion, the melody of things 
moving in time and tune, without violating the grace- 
ful appearance of ease which Art requires. 

So I had an eye to Jenny's education in my article 
which I unfolded and read, and which was entitled, 

Home-keeping vs. House-keeping. 

There are many women who know how to keep a 
house, but there are but few that know how to keep 
a home. To keep a house may seem a complicated 
afifair, but it is a thing that may be learned ; it lies in 
the region of the material, in the region of weight, 
measure, color, and the positive forces of life. To 
keep a home lies not merely in the sphere of all these, 
but it takes in the intellectual, the social, the spiritual, 
the immortal. 

Here the hickory-stick broke in two, and the tsvo 



Home-Keeping vs. House-Keeping. 31 

brands fell controversially out and apart on the hearth, 
scattering the ashes and coals, and calling for Jenny 
and the hearth-brush. Your wood-fire has this foible, 
that it needs something to be done to it every five 
minutes ; but, after all, these little interruptions of 
our bright-faced genius are like the piquant sallies of 
a clever friend, — they do not strike us as unreason 
able. 

When Jenny had laid down her brush, she said, — • 

" Seems to me, papa, you are beginning to soar 
into metaphysics.'* 

" Everything in creation is metaphysical in its ab- 
stract terms," said I, with a look calculated to reduce 
her to a respectful condition. " Everything has a 
subjective and an objective mode of presentation." 

" There papa goes with subjective and objective ! " 
said Marianne. " For my part, I never can remember 
which is which." 

" I remember," said Jenny ; " it *s what our old 
nurse used to call internal and out-tevnalj — I always 
remember by that." 

" Come, my dears," said my wife, " let your father 
read " ; so I went on as follows : — 

I remember in my bachelor days going with my 
boon companion, Bill Carberry, to look at the house 
to which he was in a few weeks to introduce his bride. 



32 House and Home Papers, 

Bill was a gallant, free-hearted, open-handed fellow^ 
the life of our whole set, and we felt that natural 
aversion to losing him that bachelor friends would. 
How could we tell under what strange aspects he 
might look forth upon us, when once he had passed 
into " that undiscovered country " of matrimony ? But 
Bill laughed to scorn our apprehensions. 

" I '11 tell you what, Chris," he said, as he sprang 
cheerily up the steps and unlocked the door of his 
future dwelling, " do you know what I chose this 
house for ? Because it 's a social-looking house. Look 
there, now," he said, as he ushered me into a pair of 
parlors, — " look at those long south windows, the 
sun lies there nearly all day long ; see what a capital 
corner there is for a lounging-chair ; fancy us, Chris, 
with our books or our paper, spread out loose and 
easy, and Sophie gliding in and out like a sunbeam. 
I 'm getting poetical, you see. Then, did you ever 
see a better, wider, airier dining-room ? What capital 
suppers and things we '11 have there ! the nicest times, 
— everything free and easy, you know, — just what 
I 've always wanted a house for. I tell you, Chris, 
you and Tom Innis shall have latch-keys just like 
mine, and there is a capital chamber there at the head 
of the stairs, so that you can be free to come and go. 
And here now 's the library, — fancy this full of books 
and engravings from the ceiling to the floor ; here you 



Home-Keeping vs. House-Keeping. 33 

shall come just as you please and ask no questions, — 
all the same as if it were your own, you know." 

" And Sophie, what will she say to all this ? " 

" Why, you know Sophie is a prime friend to both 
of you, and a capital girl to keep things going. O, 
Sophie '11 make a house of this, you may depend ! " 

A day or two after, Bill dragged me stumbling over 
boxes and through straw and wrappings to show me 
the glories of the parlor-furniture, — with which he 
seemed pleased as a child with a new toy. 

" Look here," he said ; *' see these chairs, garnet- 
colored satin, with a pattern on each ; well, the sofa 's 
just like them, and the curtains to match, and the 
carpets made for the floor with centre-pieces and 
borders. I never saw anything more magnificent in 
my life. Sophie's governor furnishes the house, and 
everything is to be A No. i, and all that, you see. 
Messrs. Curtain and Collamore are coming to make 
the rooms up, and her mother is busy as a bee getting 
us in order." 

" Why, Bill," said I, " you are going to be lodged 
like a prince. I hope you '11 be able to keep it up ; 
but law-business comes in rather slowly at first, old 
fellow." 

" Well, you know it is n't the way I should furnish, 
if my capital was the one to cash the bills ; but then, 
you see, Sophie's people do it, and let them, — agin 



34 House and Home Papers, 

does n't want to come down out of the st}'le she has 
always lived in.'* 

I said nothing, but had an oppressive . presentiment 
that social freedom would expire in that house, crushed 
under a weight of upholstery. 

But there came in due time the wedding and the 
wedding-reception, and we all went to see Bill in his 
new house splendidly lighted up and complete from 
top to toe, and everybody said what a lucky fellow he 
was j but that was about the end of it, so far as our 
visiting was concerned. The running in, and drop- 
ping in, and keeping latch-keys, and making informal 
calls, that had been forespoken, seemed about as 
likely as if Bill had lodged in the Tuileries. 

Sophie, who had always been one of your snap- 
ping, sparkling, busy sort of girls, began at once to 
develop her womanhood, and show her principles, and 
was as different from her former self as your careworn, 
mousing old cat is from your rollicking, frisky kitten. 
Not but that Sophie was a good girl. She had a cap- 
ital heart, a good, true womanly one, and was loving 
and obliging ; but still she was one of the desperately 
painstaking, conscientious sort of women whose very 
blood, as they grow older, is devoured with anxiety, 
and she came of a race of women in whom house- 
keeping was more than an art or a science, — it was, 
so to speak, a religion. Sophie's mother, aunts, and 



House-Keeping vs. Home-Keeping. 35 

grandmothers, for nameless generations back, were 
known and celebrated housekeepers. They might 
have been genuine descendants of the inhabitants of 
that Hollandic town of Broeck, celebrated by Wash- 
ington living, where the cows' tails are kept tied up 
with unsullied blue ribbons, and the ends of the fire- 
wood are painted white. He relates how a celebrated 
preacher, visiting this town, found it impossible to 
draw these housewives from their earthly views and 
employments, until he took to preaching on the neat- 
ness of the celestial city, the unsullied crystal of its 
walls and the polish of its golden pavement, when the 
faces of all the housewives were set Zionward at once. 

Now this solemn and earnest view of housekeeping 
is onerous enough when a poor girl first enters on the 
care of a moderately furnished house, where the ar- 
ticles are not too expensive to be reasonably renewed 
as time and use wear them ; but it is infinitely worse 
when a cataract of splendid furniture is heaped upon 
her care, —when splendid crystals cut into her con- 
science, and mirrors reflect her duties, and moth and 
rust stand ever ready to devour and sully in every 
room and passage-way. 

Sophie was solemnly warned and instructed by all 
the mothers and aunts, — she was warned of moths, 
warned of cockroaches, warned of flies, warned of 
dust; all the articles of furniture had their covers, 



36 House and Home Papers. 

made of cold Holland linen, in which they looked 
like bodies laid out, — even the curtain-tassels had 
each its little shroud, — and bundles of receipts and 
of rites and ceremonies necessary for the preservation 
and purification and care of all these articles were 
stuffed into the poor girl's head, before guiltless of 
cares as the feathers that floated above it 

Poor Bill found very soon that his house and fur- 
niture were to be kept at such an ideal point of per- 
fection that he needed another house to live in, — for, 
poor fellow, he found the difference between having a 
house and a home. It was only a year or two after 
that my wife and I started our menage on very differ- 
ent principles, and Bill would often drop in upon us, 
wistfully lingering in the cosey arm-chair between my 
writing-table and my wife's sofa, and saying with a sigh 
how confoundedly pleasant things looked there, — 
so pleasant to have a bright, open fire, and geraniums 
and roses and birds, and all that sort of thing, and to 
dare to stretch out one's legs and move without think- 
ing what one was going to hit. " Sophie is a good 
girl ! " he would say, " and wants to have everything 
right, but you see they won't let her. They 've loaded 
her with so many things that have to be kept in lav- 
ender, that the poor girl is actually getting thin and 
losing her health ; and then, you see, there 's Aunt 
Zeruali, she mounts guard at our house, and keeps up 



Hcuse-Keeping vs. Home-Keeping, 37 

such strict police-regulations that a fellow can't do a 
thing. The parlors are splendid, but so lonesome 
and dismal ! — not a ray of sunshine, in fact not a ray 
of light, except when a visitor is calling, and then 
they open a crack. They 're afraid of flies, and yet, 
dear knows, they keep every looking-glass and pic- 
ture-frame muffled to its throat from March to De- 
cember. I 'd like for curiosity to see what a fly would 
do in our parlors ! " 

" Well," said I, " can't you have some little family 
sitting-room, where you can make yourselves cosey ? " 

" Not a bit of it. Sophie and Aunt Zeruah have 
fixed their throne up in our bedroom, and there they 
sit all day long, except at calling-hours, and then 
Sophie dresses herself and comes down. Aunt Zeruah 
insists upon it that the way is to put the whole house 
in order, and shut all the blinds, and sit in your bed- 
room, and then, she says, nothing gets out of place ; 
and she tells poor Sophie the most hocus-pocus 
stories about her grandmothers and aunts, who always 
kept everything in their houses so that they could go 
and lay their hands on it in the darkest night. I '11 
bet they could in our house. From end to end it is 
kept looking as if we had shut it up and gone to 
Europe, — not a book, not a paper, not a glove, or 
any trace of a human being, in sight. The piano shut 
tight, the bookcases shut and locked, the engravings 



38 House and Home Papers, 

locked up, all the drawers and closets locked. Why, 
if I want to take a fellow into the library, in the first 
place it smells like a vault, and I have to unbarricade 
windows, and unlock and rummage for half an hour 
before I can get at anything ; and I know Aunt Ze* 
ruah is standing tiptoe at the door, ready to whip 
everything back and lock up again. A fellow can't 
be social, or take any comfort in showing his books 
and pictures that way. Then there 's our great, light 
dining-room, with its sunny south windows, — Aunt 
Zeruah got us out of that early in April, because she 
said the flies would speck the frescos and get into 
the china-closet, and we have been eating in a little 
dingy den, with a window looking out on a back-alley, 
ever since ; and Aunt Zeruah says that now the dining- 
room is always in perfect order, and that it is such a 
care off Sophie's mind that I ought to be willing to 
eat down-cellar to the end of the chapter. Now, you 
see, Chris, my position is a delicate one, because 
Sophie's folks all agree, that, if there is anything in 
creation that is ignorant and dreadful and must n't be 
allowed his way anywhere, it 's ^ a man.' Why, you 'd 
think, to hear Aunt Zeruah talk, that we were all like 
bulls in a china-shop, ready to toss and tear and rend, 
if we are not kept down-cellar and chained ; and she 
worries Sophie, and Sophie's mother comes in and 
worries, and if I try to get anything done differently, 



House-Keeping vs. Home-Keeping, 39 

Sophie cries, and says she don't know what to do, and 
so I give it up. Now, if I want to ask a few of our 
set in sociably to dinner, I can't have them where we 
eat down-cellar, — O, that would never do 1 Aunt 
Zeruah and Sophie's mother and the whole family 
would think the family honor was forever ruined and 
undone. We must n't ask them, unless we open the 
dining-room, and have out all the best china, and get 
the silver home from the bank ; and if we do that, 
Aunt Zeruah does n't sleep for a week beforehand, 
getting ready for it, and for a week after, getting 
things put away ; and then she tells me, that, in So- 
phie's delicate state, it really is abominable for me to 
increase her cares, and so I invite fellows to dine with 
me at Delmonico's, and then Sophie cries, and So- 
phie's mother says it does n't look respectable for a 
family-man to be dining at public places ; but, hang it, 
a fellow wants a home somewhere ! " 

My wife soothed the chafed spirit, and spake com- 
fortably unto him, and told him that he knew there 
was the old lounging-chair always ready for him at 
our fireside. " And you know," she said, " our things 
are all so plain that we are never tempted to mount 
any guard over them ; our carpets are nothing, and 
therefore we let the sun fade them, and live on the 
sunshine and the flowers." 

" That 's it," said Bill, bitterly. " Carpets fading 



40 House and Home Papers, 

— that *s Aunt Zeniah's monomania. These -women 
think that the great object of houses is to keep out 
sunshine. What a fool I was, when I gloated over 
the prospect of our sunny south windows ! Why, 
man, there are three distinct sets of fortifications 
against the sunshine in those windows : first, outside 
blinds ; then, solid, folding, inside shutters ; and, last- 
ly, heavy, thick, lined damask curtains, which loop 
quite down to the floor. What 's the use of my pic- 
tures, I desire to know ? They are hung in that room, 
and it 's a regular campaign to get light enough to see 
what they are." 

" But, at all events, you can light them up with gas 
in the evening." 

" In the evening ! Why, do you know my wife 
never wants to sit there in the evening? She says 
she has so much sewing to do that she and Aunt 
Zeruah must sit up in the bedroom, because it would 
n't do to bring work into the parlor. Did n't you 
know that ? Don't you know there must n't be such 
a thing as a bit of real work ever seen in a parlor? 
What if some threads should drop on the carpet? 
Aunt Zeruah would have to open all the fortifications 
next day, and search Jerusalem with candles to find 
them. No ; in the evening the gas is lighted at half- 
cock, you know ; and if I turn it up, and bring in my 
newspapers and spread about me, and pull down some 



House-Keeping vs. Home-Keeping, 41 

books to read, I can feel the nervousness through the 
chamber-floor. Aunt Zeruah looks in at eight, and at 
a quarter past, and at half-past, and at nine, and at 
ten, to see if I am done, so that she may fold up the 
papers and put a book on them, and lock up the 
books in their cases. Nobody ever comes in to spend 
an evening. They used to try it when we were first 
married, but I believe the uninhabited appearance of 
our parlors discouraged them. Everybody has stopped 
coming now, and Aunt Zeruah says ' it is such a com- 
fort, for now the rooms are always in order. How 
poor Mrs. Crowfield lives, with her house such a 
thoroughfare, she is sure she can't see. Sophie never 
would have strength for it ; but then, to be sure, some 
folks a'n't as particular as others. Sophie was brought 
up in a family of very particular housekeepers.' " 

My wife smiled, with that calm, easy, amused smile 
that has brightened up her sofa for so many years. 

Bill added, bitterly, — 

" Of course, I could n't say that I wished the whole 
set and system of housekeeping women at the — 
what-'s-his-name ? because Sophie would have cried 
for a week, and been utterly forlorn and disconsolate. 
I know it 's not the poor girl's fault ; I try sometimes 
to reason with her, but you can't reason with the whole 
of your wife's family, to the third and fourth genera- 
tion backwards ; but I 'm sure it 's hurting her health, 



42 House and Home Papers, 

— wearing her out. Why, you know Sophie used to 
be the life of our set ; and nov/ she really seems 
eaten up with care from morning to night, there are 
so many things in tlie house that something dreadful 
is happening to all the while, and the servants we get 
are so clumsy. Why, when I sit with Sophie and 
Aunt Zeruah, it 's nothing but a constant string of 
complaints about the girls in the kitchen. We keep 
changing our servants all the time, and they break 
and destroy so that now we are turned out of the 
use of all our things. We not only eat in the base- 
ment, but all our pretty table-things are put away, 
and we have all the cracked plates and cracked 
tumblers and cracked teacups and old buck-handled 
knives that can be raised out of chaos. I could use 
these things and be merry, if I did n't know we had 
better ones ; and I can't help wondering whether there 
is n't some way that our table could be set to look 
like a gentleman's table ; but Aunt Zeruah says that 
^ it would cost thousands, and what difference does it 
make as long as nobody sees it but us ? ' You see, 
there is no medium in her mind between china and 
crystal and cracked earthen-ware. Well, I 'm won 
dering how all these laws of the Medes and Persians 
are going to work when the children come along. 
I 'm in hopes the children will soften off the old 
folks, and make the house more habitable." 



House-Keeping vs. Home-Keeping, 43 

Well, children did come, a good many of them, in 
time. There was Tom, a broad-shouldered, chubby- 
cheeked, active, hilarious son of mischief, born in the 
very image of his father ; and there was Charlie, and 
Jim, and Louisa, and Sophie the second, and Frank, 
— and a better, brighter, more joy-giving household, 
as far as temperament and nature were concerned, 
never existed. 

But their whole childhood was a long battle, chil- 
dren versus furniture, and furniture always carried the 
day. The first step of the housekeeping powers was 
to choose the least agreeable and least available room 
in the house for the children's nursery, and to fit it up 
with all the old, cracked, rickety furniture a neigh- 
boring auction-shop could afford, and then to keep 
them in it. Now everybody knows that to bring up 
children to be upright, true, generous, and religious, 
needs so much discipline, so much restraint and cor- 
rection, and so many rules and regulations, that it is 
all that the parents can carry out, and all the children 
can bear. There is only a certain amount of the vital 
force for parents or children to use in this business of 
education, and one must choose what it shall be used 
for. The Aunt-Zeruah faction chose to use it for 
keeping the house and furniture, and the children's 
education proceeded accordingly. The rules of right 
and wrong of which they heard most frequently were 



44 House and Home Papers, 

all of this sort : Naughty children were those wno 
went up the front-stairs, or sat on the best sofa, o\ 
fingered any of the books in the library, or got out 
one of the best teacups, or drank out of the cut- 
glass goblets. 

Why did they ever want to do it ? If there ever 
is a forbidden fruit in an Eden, will not our young 
Adams and Eves risk soul and body to find out how 
it tastes ? Little Tom, the oldest boy, had the cour- 
age and enterprise and perseverance of a Captain 
Parry or Dr. Kane, and he used them all in voy- 
ages of discovery to forbidden grounds. He stole 
Aunt Zeruah's keys, unlocked her cupboards and 
closets, saw, handled, and tasted everything for him- 
self, and gloried in his sins. 

" Don't you know, Tom," said the nurse to him 
once, " if you are so noisy and rude, you '11 disturb 
your dear mamma ? She 's sick, and she may die, if 
you 're not careful." 

" Will she die ? " says Tom, gravely. 

" Why, she mayT 

" Then," said Tom, turning on his heel, — " then 
I '11 go up the front-stairs." 

As soon as ever the little rebel was old enough, he 
was sent away to boarding-school, and then there was 
never found a time when it was convenient to have 
him come home again. He could not come in the 



House-Keeping vs. Home-Keeping, 45 

spring, for then they were house-cleaning, nor in the 
autumn, because then they were house-cleaning ; and 
so he spent his vacations at school, unless, by good 
luck, a companion who was so fortunate as to have 
a home invited him there. His associations, asso- 
ciates, habits, principles, were as little known to his 
mother as if she had sent him to China. Aunt Zeruah 
used to congratulate herself on the rest there was at 
home, now he was gone, and say she was only living 
in hopes of the time when Charlie and Jim would be 
big enough to send away too ; and meanwhile Charlie 
and Jim, turned out of the charmed circle which should 
hold growing boys to the father's and mother's side, 
detesting the dingy, lonely play-room, used to run the 
city streets, and hang round the railroad depots or 
docks. Parents may depend upon it, that, if they 
do not make an attractive resort for their boys, Satan 
will. There are places enough, kept warm and light 
and bright and merry, where boys can go whose 
motheis' parlors are too fine for them to sit in. There 
ure enough to be found to clap them on the back, and 
tell them stories that their mothers must not hear, 
and laugh when they compass with their little piping 
voices the dreadful litanies of sin and shame. In 
middle life, our poor Sophie, who as a girl was so 
gay and frolicsome, so full of spirits, had dried and 
sharpened into a hard-visaged, angular woman, -— 



46 House and Home Papers, 

careful and troubled about many things, and forget- 
ful that one thing is needful. One of the boys had 
run away to sea ; 1 believe he has never been heard 
of. As to Tom, the oldest, he ran a career wild and 
hard enough for a time, first at school and then in 
college, and there came a time when he came home, 
in the full might of six feet two, and almost broke his 
mother's heart with his assertions of his home rights 
and privileges. Mothers who throw away the key of 
their children's hearts and childhood sometimes have 
a sad retribution. As the children never were con- 
sidered when they were little and helpless, so they 
do not consider when they are strong and powerful. 
Tom spread wide desolation among the household 
gods, lounging on the sofas, spitting tobacco-juice on 
the carpets, scattering books and engravings hither 
and thither, and throwing all the family traditions 
into wild disorder, as he would never have done, had 
not all his childish remembrances of them been em- 
bittered by the association of restraint and privation. 
He actually seemed to hate any appearance of luxury 
or taste or order, — he was a perfect Philistine. 

As for my friend Bill, from being the pleasantest 
and most genial of fellows, he became a morose, 
misanthropic man. Dr. Franklin has a significant 
proverb, — " Silks and satins put out the kitchen* 
fire." Silks and satins — meaning by them the lux- 



House-Keeping vs. Home-Keeping, 47 

aries of housekeeping — often put out not only the 
parlor-fire, but that more sacred flame, the fire of 
domestic love. It is the greatest possible misery 
to a man and to his children to be homeless; and 
many a man has a splendid house, but no home. 

" Papa," said Jenny, " you ought to write and tell 
what are your ideas of keeping a honied 

" Girls, you have only to think how your mother 
has brought you up." 

Nevertheless, I think, being so fortunate a hus- 
band, I might reduce my wife's system to an anal« 
ysis, and my next paper shall be, — 

H^hat is a Home, and how to keep it. 



III. 

WHAT IS A HOME? 

IT is among the sibylline secrets which lie mys- 
teriously between you and me, O reader, that 
these papers, besides their public aspect, have a 
private one proper to the bosom of mine own par- 
ticular family. 

They are not merely an ex post facto protest in 
regard to that carpet and parlor of celebrated mem- 
ory, but they are forth-looking towards other homes 
that may yet arise near us. 

For, among my other confidences, you may recol- 
lect I stated to you that our Marianne was busy in 
those interesting cares and details which relate to 
the preparing and ordering of another dwelling. 

Now, when any such matter is going on in a family, 
I have observed that every feminine instinct is in a 
state of fluttering vitality, — every woman, old or 
young, is alive with womanliness to the tips of her 
fingers ; and it becomes us of the other sex, how- 
ever consciously respected, to walk softly and put 
forth our sentiments discreetly and with due rever 



What is a Home? 49 

ence for the mysterious powers that reign in the 
feminine breast 

I had been too well advised to offer one word of 
direct counsel on a subject where there were such 
charming voices, so able to convict me of absurdity 
at every turn. I had merely so arranged my affairs 
as to put into the hands of my bankers, subject to 
my wife's order, the very modest marriage-portion 
which I could place at my girl's disposal ; and Mari- 
anne and Jenny, unused to the handling of money, 
were incessant in their discussions with ever-patient 
mamma as to what was to be done with it. I say 
Marianne and Jenny, for, though the case undoubt- 
edly is Marianne's, yet, like everything else in our 
domestic proceedings, it seems to fall, somehow or 
other, into Jenny's hands, through the intensity and 
liveliness of her domesticity of nature. Little Jenny 
is so bright and wide-awake, and with so many ac- 
tive plans and fancies touching anything in the house- 
keeping world, that, though the youngest sister, and 
second party in this affair, a stranger, hearkening to 
the daily discussions, might listen a half-hour at a 
time without finding out that it was not Jenny's fu- 
ture establishment that was in question. Marianne 
is a soft, thoughtful, quiet girl, not given to many 
words ; and though, when you come fairly at it, you 
will find, that, like most quiet girls, she has a will 
3 i> 



50 House and Home Papers, 

five times as inflexible as one who talks more, yet 
in all family counsels it is Jenny and mamma that 
do the discussion, and her own little well-considered 
" Yes," or '* No," that finally settles each case. 

I must add to this family tableau the portrait of 
the excellent Bob Stephens, who figured as future 
proprietor and householder in these consultations. 
So far as the question of financial possibilities is 
concerned, it is important to remark that Bob be- 
longs to the class of young Edmunds celebrated 
by the poet : — 

" Wisdom and worth were all he had." 

He is, in fact, an excellent-hearted and clever fel- 
low, with a world of agreeable talents, a good tenor 
in a parlor-duet, a good actor at a charade, a lively, 
off-hand conversationist, well up in all the current 
literature of the day, and what is more, in my eyes, 
a well-read lawyer, just admitted to the bar, and with 
as fair business prospects as usually fall to the lot of 
young aspirants in that profession. 

Of course, he and my girl are duly and truly in 
love, in all the proper moods and tenses ; but as to 
tliis work they have in hand of being householders, 
managing fuel, rent, provision, taxes, gas- and water- 
rates, they seem to my older eyes about as sagacious 
as a pair of this year's robins. Nevertheless, as the 



What is a Home? 51 

robins of each year do somehow learn to build nests 
as well as their ancestors, there is reason to hope as 
much for each new pair of human creatures. But it is 
one of the fatalities of our ill-jointed life that houses 
are usually furnished for future homes by young peo- 
ple in just this state of blissful ignorance of what 
they are really wanted for, or what is likely to be 
done with the things in them. 

Now, to people of large incomes, with ready 
wealth for the rectification of mistakes, it does n't 
much matter how the menage is arranged at first j 
they will, if they have good sense, soon rid them- 
selves of the little infelicities and absurdities of 
their first arrangements, and bring their establish- 
ment to meet their more instructed tastes. 

But to that greater class who have only a modest 
investment for this first start in domestic life mis- 
takes are far more serious. I have known people 
go on for years groaning under the weight of do- 
mestic possessions they did not want, and pining in 
vain for others which they did, simply from the fact 
that all their first purchases were made in this time 
of blissful ignorance. 

I had been a quiet auditor to many animated dis- 
cussions among the young people as to what they 
wanted, and were to get, in which the subject of 
orudence and economy was discussed, with quota- 



52 Hou^e and Home Papers, 

tions of advice thereon given in serious good-faith 
by various friends and relations who lived easily on 
incomes four or five times larger than our own. AVho 
can show the ways of elegant economy more per- 
fectly than people thus at ease in their possessions? 
From what serene heights do they instruct the inex- 
perienced beginners ! Ten thousand a year gives 
one leisure for reflection, and elegant leisure ena- 
bles one to view household economies dispassion- 
ately ; hence the unction with which these gifted 
daughters of upper-air delight to exhort young neo- 
phytes. 

'' Depend upon it, my dear/' Aunt Sophia Easygo 
had said, " it 's always the best economy to get the 
be=t things. They cost more in the beginning, but 
see how they last ! These velvet carpets on my 
floor have been in constant wear for ten years, and 
loo : how they wear ! I never have an ingrain car- 
pet in my house, — not even on the chambers. Vel 
vet and Brussels cost more to begin with, but then 
they last. Then I cannot recommend the fashion 
that is creeping in, of having plate instead of solid 
silver. Plate wears off, and has to be renewed, 
which comes to about the same thing in the end 
as if you bought all solid at first. If I were begin- 
ning as Marianne i,s, I should just set aside a thou- 
sand dollars for my silver, and be content with a 



What is a Home? 53 

few plain articles. She should buy all her furniture 
at Messrs. David and Saul's. People call them dear, 
but their work will prove cheapest in the end, and 
there is an air and style about their things that can 
be told anywhere. Of course, you won't go to any 
extravagant lengths, — simplicity is a grace of itself" 

The waters of the family council were troubled, 
when Jenny, flaming with enthusiasm, brought home 
the report of this conversation. When my wife pro- 
ceeded, with her well-trained business knowledge, to 
compare the prices of the simplest elegancies recom- 
mended by Aunt Easygo with the sum-total to be 
drawn on, faces lengthened perceptibly. 

" How are people to go to housekeeping," said 
Jenny, " if everything costs so much ? " 

My wife quietly remarked, that we had had great 
comfort in our own home, — had entertained unnum- 
bered friends, and had only ingrain carpets on our 
chambers and a three-ply on our parlor, and she 
doubted if any guest had ever thought of it, — if 
the rooms had been a shade less pleasant ; and as 
to durability, Aunt Easygo had renewed her car- 
pets oftener than we. Such as ours were, they had 
worn longer than hers. 

" But, mamma, you know everything has gone on 
since your day. Everybody must at least approach 
a certain style now-a-days. One can*t furnish so fat 
behind other people." 



54 House and Home Papers, 

My wife answered in her quiet way, setting forth 
her doctrine of a plain average to go through the 
whole establishment, placing parlors, chambers, kitch- 
en, pantries, and the unseen depths of linen-closets in 
harmonious relations of just proportion, and showed 
by calm estimates how far the sum given could go 
towards this result. There the limits were inexorable. 
There is nothing so damping to the ardor of youthful 
economies as the hard, positive logic of figures. It is 
so delightful to think in some airy way that the things 
we like best are the cheapest, and that a sort of rigor- 
ous duty compels us to get them at any sacrifice. 
There is no remedy for this illusion but to show by 
the multiplication and addition tables what things are 
and are not possible. My wife's figures met Aunt 
Easygo's assertions, and there was a lull. among the 
high contracting parties for a season ; nevertheless, I 
could see Jenny was secretly uneasy. I began to hear 
of journeys made to far places, here and there, where 
expensive articles of luxury were selling at reduced 
prices. Now a gilded mirror was discussed, and 
now a velvet carpet which chance had brought down 
temptingly near the *sphere of financial possibility. I 
thought of our parlor, and prayed the good fairies to 
avert the advent of ill-assorted articles. 

" Pray keep common sense uppermost in the girls' 
heads, if you can," said I to Mrs. Crowfield, '" and 



What is a Home? 55 

don't let the poor little puss spend her money for 
what she won't care a button about by and by." 

" i shall try/' she said ; " but you know Marianne 
is inexperienced, and Jenny is so ardent and active, 
and so confident, too. Then they both, I think, have 
the impression that we are a little behind the age. 
To say jthe truth, my dear, I think your papers afford 
a good opportunity of dropping a thought now and 
then in their minds. Jenny was asking last night 
when you were going to write your next paper. The 
girl has a bright, active mind, and thinks of what she 
hears." 

So flattered, by the best of flatterers, I sat down 
to write on my theme ; and that evening, at fire-light 
time, I read to my little senate as follows : — 

What is a Home, and how to keep it. 

I have shown that a dwelling, rented or owned by 
a man, in which his own wife keeps house, is not 
always, or of course, a home. What is it, then, that 
makes a home ? Ail men and women have the in- 
definite knowledge of what they want and long for 
when that word is spoken. " Home ! " sighs the dis- 
consolate bachelor, tired of boarding-house fare and 
buttonless shirts. " Home ! " says the wanderer in 
foreign lands, and thinks of mother's love, of wife 



56 House and Home Papers. 

and sister and child. Nay, the word has in it a higher 
meaning, hallowed by religion ; and when the Chris- 
tian would express the highest of his hopes for a 
better life, he speaks of his home beyond the grave. 
The word home has in it the elements of love, rest, 
permanency, and liberty ; but besides these it has in 
it the idea of an education by which all that js purest 
within us is developed into nobler forms, fit for a 
higher life. The little child by the home-fireside was 
taken on the Master's knee when he would explain to 
his disciples the mysteries of the kingdom. 

Of so great dignity and worth is this holy and 
sacred thing, that the power to create a home ought 
to be ranked above all creative faculties. The sculp- 
tor who brings out the breathing statue from cold 
marble, the painter who warms the canvas into a 
deathless glow of beauty, the architect who built ca- 
thedrals and hung the world-like dome of St. Peter's 
in mid-air, is not to be compared, in sanctity and 
worthiness, to the humblest artist, who, out of the 
poor materials afforded by this shifting, changing, 
selfish world, creates the secure Eden of 2, home, 

A true home should be called the noblest work of 
art possible to human creatures, inasmuch as it is the 
very image chosen to represent the last and highest 
rest of the soul, the consummation of man's blessed- 
ness. 



What is a Home? 57 

N >t without reason does the oldest Christian church 
require of those entering on marriage the most sol- 
emn review of all the past life, the confession and 
repentance of every sin of thought, word, and deed, 
and the reception of the holy sacrament ; for thus the 
man and woman who approach the august duty of 
creating a home are reminded of the sanctity and 
beauty of what they undertake. 

In this art of home-making I have set down in my 
mind certain first principles, like the axioms of Euclid, 
and the first is, — 

No home is possible without love. 

All business marriages and marriages of conven- 
ience, all mere culinary marriages and marriages of 
mere animal passion, make the creation of a true 
home impossible in the outset. Love is the jewelled 
foundation of this New Jerusalem descending from 
God out of heaven, and takes as many bright forms 
as the amethyst, topaz, and sapphire of that myste- 
rious vision. In this range of creative art all things 
are possible to him that loveth, but without love 
nothing is possible. 

We hear of most convenient marriages in foreign 
lands, which may better be described as commercial 
partnerships. The money on each side is counted ; 
there is enough between the parties to carry on the 
firm, each having the appropriate sum allotted to 



58 House and Home Papers, 

each. No love is pretended, but there is great po- 
liteness. All is so legally and thoroughly arranged, 
that there seems to be nothing left for future quarrela 
to fasten on. Monsieur and Madame have each theii 
apartments, their carriages, their servants, their in- 
come, theii friends, their pursuits, — understand the 
solemn vows of marriage to mean simply that they 
are to treat each other with urbanity in those few 
situations where the path of life must necessarily bring 
them together. 

We are sorry that such an idea of marriage should 
be gaining foothold in America. It has its root in an 
ignoble view of life, — an utter and pagan darkness 
as to all that man and woman are called to do in that 
highest relation where they act as one. It is a mean 
and low contrivance on both sides, by which all the 
grand work of home-building, all the noble pains and 
heroic toils of home-education, — that education where 
the parents learn more than they teach, — shall be (let 
us use the expressive Yankee idiom) shirked. 

It is a curious fact that in those countries where 
this system of marriages is the general rule there is 
no word corresponding to our English word ho?ne. In 
many polite languages of Europe it would be impos- 
sible neatly to translate the sentiment with which we 
began this essay, that a man's house is not always his 
home. 



What is a Home? 59 

Let any one try to render the song, " Sweet Home," 
into French, and one finds how Anglo-Saxon is the 
very genius of the word. The structure of Hfe, in all 
its relations, in countries where marriages are matter 
of arrangement, and not of love, excludes the idea of 
home. 

How does life run in such countries ? The girl is 
recalled from her convent or boarding-school, and told 
that her father has found a husband for her. No ob- 
jection on her part is contemplated or provided for; 
none generally occurs, for the child is only too happy 
to obtain the fine clothes and the liberty which she 
has been taught come only with marriage. Be the 
man handsome or homely, interesting or stupid, still 
he brings these. 

How intolerable such a marriage ! we say, with the 
close intimacies of Anglo-Saxon life in our minds. 
They are not intolerable, because they are provided 
for by arrangements which make it possible for each 
to go his or her several way, seeing very little of the 
other. The son or daughter, which in due time makes 
its appearance in this menage^ is sent out to nurse 
in infancy, sent to boarding-school in youth, and in 
maturity portioned and married, to repeat the same 
process for another generation. Meanwhile, father 
and mother keep a quiet establishment, and pursue 
their several pleasures. Such is the system. 



6o House and Home Papers, 

Houses built for this kind of life become mere sets 
of reception-rooms, such as are the greater proportion 
of apartments tc let in Paris, where a hearty English 
or American family, with their children about them, 
could scarcely find room to establish themselves. 
Individual character, it is true, does something to 
modify this programme. There are charming homes 
in France and Italy, where warm and noble natures, 
thrown together, perhaps, by accident, or mated by 
wise paternal choice, infuse warmth into the coldness 
of the system under which they live. There are in 
all states of society some of such domesticity of 
nature that they will create a home around them- 
selves under any circumstances, however barren. Be- 
sides, so kindly is human nature, that Love uninvited 
before marriage, often becomes a guest after, and with 
Love always comes a home. 

My next axiom is, — 

There can be no true home without liberty. 

The very idea of home is of a retreat where we 
shall be free to act out personal and individual tastes 
and peculiarities, as we cannot do before the wide 
world. We are to have our meals at what hour we 
will, served in what style suits us. Our hours of 
going and coming are to be as we please. Our favor- 
ite haunts are to be here or there, our pictures and 
books so disposed as seems to us good, and oui 



What is a Home? 6 1 

whole arrangements the expression, so far as cm 
means can compass it, of our own perso^jal ideas of 
what is pleasant and desirable in life. This element 
of liberty, if we think of it, is the chief charm of 
home. " Here I can do as I please," is the thought 
with which the tempest-tossed earth-pilgrim blesses 
himself or herself, turning inward from the crowded 
ways of the world. This thought blesses the man of 
business, as he turns from his day's care, and crosses 
the sacred threshold. It is as restful to him as the 
slippers and gown and easy-chair by the fireside. 
Everybody understands him here. Everybody is well 
content that he should take his ease in his own way. 
Such is the case in the ideal home. That such is not 
always the case in the real home comes often from 
the mistakes in the house-furnishing. Much house- 
furnishing is too fine for liberty. 

In America there is no such thing as rank and 
station which impose a sort of prescriptive style on 
people of certain income. The consequence is that 
all sorts of furniture and belongings, which in the Old 
World have a recognized relation to certain possibili- 
ties of income, and which require certain other acces- 
sories to make them in good keeping, are thrown in 
tlie way of all sorts of people. 

Young people who cannot expect by any reasonable 
possibility to keep more than two or three servants, if 



62 House and Home Papers, 

they happen to have the means in the outset, furnish 
a house with just such articles as in England would 
suit an establishment of sixteen. We have seen 
houses in England having two or three house-maids, 
and tables served by a butler and two waiters, where 
the furniture, carpets, china, crystal, and silver were 
in one and the same style with some establishments 
in America where the family was hard pressed to keep 
three Irish servants. 

This want of servants is the one thing that must 
modify everything in American life ; it is, and will long 
continue to be, a leading feature in the life of a coun- 
try so rich in openings for man and woman that do- 
mestic service can be only the stepping-stone to some- 
thing higher. Nevertheless, we Americans are great 
travellers ; we are sensitive, appreciative, fond of 
novelty, apt to receive and incorporate into our own 
life what seems fair and graceful in that of other peo- 
ple. Our women's wardrobes are made elaborate with 
the thousand elegancies of French toilet, — our houses 
filled with a thousand knick-knacks of which our plain 
ancestors never dreamed. Cleopatra did not set sail 
on the Nile in more state and beauty than that in 
which our young American bride is often ushered into 
her new home. Her wardrobe all gossamer lace and 
quaint frill and crimp and embroidery, her house a 
museum of elegant and costly gewgaws; and amid 



What is a Home? 63 

the whole collection of elegancies and fragilities, she, 
perhaps, the frailest 

Then comes the tug of war. The young wife be- 
comes a mother, and while she is retired to her cham- 
ber, blundering Biddy rusts the elegant knives, or 
takes off the ivory handles by soaking in hot water, 
— the silver is washed in greasy soap-suds, and re- 
freshed now and then with a thump, which cocks the 
nose of the teapot awry, or makes the handle assume 
an air of drunken defiance. The fragile China is 
chipped here and there around its edges with those 
minute gaps so vexatious to a woman's soul ; the 
handles fly hither and thither in the wild confusion 
of Biddy's washing-day hurry, when cook wants her 
to help hang out the clothes. Meanwhile, Bridget 
sweeps the parlor with a hard broom, and shakes out 
showers of ashes from the grate, forgetting to cover 
the damask lounges, and they directly look as rusty 
and time-worn as if they had come from an auction- 
store ; and all together unite in making such havoc 
of the delicate ruffles and laces of the bridal outfit 
and hdhj'layefte^ that, when the poor young wife comes 
out of her chamber after her nurse has left her, and, 
weakened and embarrassed with the demands of 
the new-comer, begins to look once more into the 
affairs of her little world, she is ready to sink with 
vexation and discouragement. Poor little princess I 



64 House and Home Papers, 

Her clothes are made as princesses wear them, her 
baby's clothes Hke a young duke's, her house fur- 
nished like a lord's, and only Bridget and Biddy and 
Polly to do the work of cook, scullery-maid, butler, 
footman, laundress, nursery-maid, house-maid, and 
lady's maid. Such is the array that in the Old Coun- 
try would be deemed necessary to take care of an 
establishment got up like hers. Everything in it is 
too jftne^ — not too fine to be pretty, not in bad taste 
in itself, but too fine for the situation, too fine for 
comfort or liberty. 

What ensues in a house so furnished ? Too often 
ceaseless fretting of the nerves, in the wife's despair- 
ing, conscientious efforts to keep things as they 
should be. There is no freedom in a house where 
things are too expensive and choice to be freely 
handled and easily replaced. Life becomes a series 
of petty embarrassments and restrictions, something 
is always going wrong, and the man finds his fireside 
oppressive, — the various articles of his parlor and 
table seem like so many temper-traps and spring- 
guns, menacing explosion and disaster. 

There may be, indeed, the most perfect home-feel- 
ing, the utmost coseyness and restfulness, in apart- 
ments crusted with gilding, carpeted with velvet, and 
upholstered with satin. I have seen such, where the 
home-like look and air of free use was as genuine as 



What is a Home? 65 

in a Western log-cabin j but this was in a range of 
princely income that made all these things as easy to 
be obtained or replaced as the most ordinary of our 
domestic furniture. But so long as articles must be 
shrouded from use, or used with fear and trembling, 
because their cost is above the general level of our 
means, we had better be without them, even though 
the most lucky of accidents may put their possession 
in our power. 

But it is not merely by the effort to maintain too 
much elegance that the sense of home-liberty is ban- 
ished from a house. It is sometimes expelled in 
another way, with all painstaking and conscientious 
strictness, by the worthiest and best of human beings, 
the blessed followers of Saint Martha. Have we not 
known them, the dear, worthy creatures, up before 
daylight, causing most scrupulous lustrations of every 
pane of glass and inch of paint in our parlors, in 
consequence whereof every shutter and blind must 
be kept closed for days to come, lest the flies should 
speck the freshly washed windows and wainscoting? 
Dear shade of Aunt Mehitabel, forgive our boldness ? 
Have we not been driven for days, in our youth, to 
read our newspaper in the front veranda, in the 
kitchen, out in the barn, — anywhere, in fact, where 
sunshine could be found, because there was not a 
room in the house that was not cleaned, shut up, 

E 



66 House and Home Papers, 

and darkened ? Have we not shivered with cold, 
all the glowering, gloomy month of May, because 
the august front-parlor having undergone the spring 
cleaning, the andirons were snugly tied up in the 
tissue-paper, and an elegant frill of the same mate- 
rial was trembling before the mouth of the once 
glowing fireplace ? Even so, dear soul, full of lov- 
ing-kindness and hospitality as thou wast, yet ever 
naking our house seem like a tomb ! And with 
(vhat patience wouldst thou sit sewing by a crack 
^n the shutters, an inch wide, rejoicing in thy im- 
maculate paint and clear glass ! But was there ever 
a thing of thy spotless and unsullied belongings 
which a boy might use ? How I trembled to touch 
thy scoured tins, that hung in appalling brightness ! 
with what awe I asked for a basket to pick straw- 
berries ! and where in the house could I find a place 
to eat a piece of gingerbread ? How like a ruffian, 
a Tartar, a pirate, I always felt, when I entered thy 
domains ! and how, from day to day, I wondered at 
the immeasurable depths of depravity which were 
always leading me to upset something, or break or 
tear or derange something, in thy exquisitely kept 
premises ! Somehow, the impression was burned 
with overpowering force into my mind, that houses 
and furniture, scrubbed floors, white curtains, bright 
tins and brasses were the great, awful, permanent 



What is a Home? 6y 

facts of existence, — and that men and women, and 
particularly children, were the meddlesome intruders 
upon this divine order, every trace of whose inter- 
meddling must be scrubbed out and obliterated in 
the quickest way possible. It seemed evident to 
me that houses would be far more perfect, if no- 
body lived in them at all ; but that, as men had 
really and absurdly taken to living in them, they 
must live as little as possible. My only idea of a 
house was a place full of traps and pitfalls for boys, 
a deadly temptation to sins which beset one every 
moment ; and when I read about a sailor's free life 
on the ocean, I felt an untold longing to go forth 
and be free in like manner. 

But a truce to these fancies, and back again to our 
essay. 

If liberty in a house is a comfort to a husband, it 
is a necessity to children. When we say liberty, we 
do not mean license. We do not mean that Master 
Johnny be allowed to handle elegant volumes with 
bread-and-butter fingers, or that little Miss be suf- 
fered to drum on the piano, or practise line-drawing 
with a pin on varnished furniture. Still it is essen- 
tial that the family-parlors be not too fine for the 
family to sit in, — too fine for the ordinary accidents, 
haps and mishaps, of reasonably well-trained children. 
The elegance of the parlor where papa and mamma 



68 House and Home Papers, 

sit and receive their friends should wear an inviting, 
not a hostile and bristling, aspect to little people. 
Its beauty and its order gradually form in the little 
mind a love of beauty and order, and the insensible 
carefulness of regard. 

Nothing is worse for a child than to shut him up 
in a room which he understands is his, because he is 
disorderly, — where he is expected, of course, to main- 
tain and keep disorder. We have sometimes pitied 
the poor little victims who show their faces longingly 
at the doors of elegant parlors, and are forthwith col- 
lared by the domestic police and consigned to some 
attic-apartment, called a play-room, where chaos con- 
tinually reigns. It is a mistake to suppose, because 
children derange a well-furnished apartment, that they 
like confusion. Order and beauty are always pleasant 
to them as to grown people, and disorder and deface- 
ment are painful ; but they know neither how to cre- 
ate the one nor to prevent the other, — their little 
lives are a series of experiments, often making dis- 
order by aiming at some new form of order. Yet, 
for all this, I am not one of those who feel that 
in a family everything should bend to the sway of 
these little people. They are the worst of tyrants 
in such houses, — still, where children are, though 
the fact must not appear to them, nothing must bt 
done without a wise thought of them. 



What is a Home? 69 

Here, as in all high art, the old motto is in force, 
" Ars est celare artemJ' Children who are taught too 
plainly by every anxious look and word of their par- 
ents, by every family arrangement, by the impress- 
ment of every chance guest into the service, that 
their parents consider their education as the one 
important matter in creation, are apt to grow up 
fantastical, artificial, and hopelessly self-conscious. 
The stars cannot stop in their courses, even for our 
personal improvement, and the sooner children learn 
this, the better. The great art is to organize a home 
which shall move on with a strong, wide, generous 
movement, where the little people shall act them- 
selves out as freely and impulsively as can consist 
with the comfort of the whole, and where the anx- 
ious watching and planning for them shall be kept 
as secret from them as possible. 

It is well that one of the sunniest and airiest rooms 
in the house be the children's nursery. It is good 
philosophy, too, to furnish it attractively, even if the 
sum expended lower the standard of parlor-luxuries. 
It is well that the children's chamber, which is to 
act constantly on their impressible natures for years, 
should command a better prospect, a sunnier aspect, 
than one which serves for a day's occupancy of the 
transient guest. It is well that journeys should be 
made or put off in v^ew of the interests of the chil 



yo House and Home Papers, 

dren, — that guests should be invited with a view to 
their improvement, — that some intimacies should be 
chosen and some rejected on their account. But it 
is not well that all this should, from infancy, be daily 
talked out before the child, and he grow up in egotism 
from moving in a sphere where everything from first 
to last is calculated and arranged with reference to 
himself A little appearance of wholesome neglect 
combined with real care and never-ceasing watchful- 
ness has often seemed to do wonders in this work 
of setting human beings on their own feet for the 
life-journey. 

Education is the highest object of home, but edu- 
cation in the widest sense, — education of the parents 
no less than of the children. In a true home the 
man and the woman receive, through their cares, 
their watchings, their hospitality, their charity, the 
last and highest finish that earth can put upon them. 
From that they must pass upward, for earth can teach 
them no more. 

The home-education is incomplete, unless it include 
the idea of hospitality and charity. Hospitality is a 
Biblical and apostolic virtue, and not so often recom- 
mended in Holy Writ without reason. Hospitality 
is much neglected in America for the very reasons 
touched upon above. We have received our ideas 
of propriety and elegance of living from old coun- 



What is a Home? 71 

tries, where labor is cheap, where domestic service 
is a well-understood, permanent occupation, adopted 
cheerfully for life, and where of course there is such 
a subdivision of labor as insures great thoroughness 
in all its branches. We are ashamed or afraid to 
conform honestly and hardily to a state of things 
purely American. We have not yet accomplished 
what our friend the Doctor calls " our weaning," and 
learned that dinners with circuitous courses and 
divers other Continental and English refinements, 
well enough in their way, cannot be accomplished 
in families with tv/o or three untrained servants, with- 
out an expense of care and anxiety which makes them 
heart-withering to the delicate wife, and too severe a 
trial to occur often. America is the land of subdi- 
vided fortunes, of a general average of wealth and 
comfort, and there ought to be, therefore, an under- 
standing in the social basis far more simple than in 
the Old World. 

Many families of small fortunes know this, — they 
are quietly living so, — but they have not the steadi- 
ness to share their daily average living with a friend, 
a traveller, or guest, just as the Arab shares his tent 
and the Indian his bowl of succotash. They cannot 
have company, they say. Why ? Because it is such 
a fuss to get out the best things, and then to put 
them back again. But why get out the best things ? 



72 House and Home Papers, 

Why not give your friend, what he would like a thou- 
sand times better, a bit of your average home-life, a 
seat at any time at your board, a seat at your fire ? 
If he sees that there is a handle off your teacup, 
and that there is a crack across one of your plates, 
he only thinks, with a sigh of relief, " Well, mine are n't 
the only things that meet with accidents," and he feels 
nearer to you ever after ; he will let you come to his 
table and see the cracks in his teacups, and you will 
condole with each other on the transient nature of 
earthly possessions. If it become apparent in these 
entirely undressed rehearsals that your children are 
sometimes disorderly, and that your cook sometimes 
overdoes the meat, and that your second girl some- 
times is awkward in waiting, or has forgotten a table 
propriety, your friend only feels, "Ah, well, other 
people have trials as well as I," and he thinks, if you 
come to see him, he shall feel easy with you. 

^^ Having company'^ is an expense that may always 
be felt j but easy daily hospitality, the plate always on 
your table for a friend, is an expense that appears on 
no account-book, and a pleasure that is daily and con- 
stant. 

Under this head of hospitality, let us suppose a 
case. A traveller comes from England ; he comes in 
good faith and good feeling to see how Americans 
live. He merely wants to penetrate into the interior 



What is a Home? 73 

of domestic life, to see what there is genuinely and 
peculiarly American about it. Now here is Smilax, 
who is living, in a small, neat way, on his salary from 
the daily press. He remembers hospitalities received 
from our traveller in England, and wants to return 
them. He remembers, too, with dismay, a well-kept 
establishment, the well-served table, the punctilious, 
orderly servants. Smilax keeps two, a cook and 
chambermaid, who divide the functions of his estab- 
lishment between them. What shall he do ? Let him 
say, in a fair, manly way, " My dear fellow, I 'm de- 
lighted to see you. I live in a small way, but 1 11 do 
my best for you, and Mrs. Smilax will be delighted. 
Come and dine with us, so and so, and we '11 bring in 
one or two friends." So the man comes, and Mrs. 
Smilax serves up such a dinner as lies within the 
limits of her knowledge and the capacities of her 
servants. All plain, good of its kind, unpretending, 
without an attempt to do anything English or French, 
« — to do anything more than if she were furnishing a 
gala-dinner for her father or returned brother. Show 
him your house freely, just as it is, talk to him freely 
of it, just as he in England showed you his larger 
house and talked to you of his finer things. If the 
man is a true man, he will thank you for such unpre- 
tending, sincere welcome ; if he is a man of straw, 
then he is not worth wasting Mrs. Smilax's health and 
4 



74 House and Home Papers. 

spirits for, in unavailing efforts to get up a foreign 
dinner-party. 

A man who has any heart in him values a genuine, 
little bit of home more than anything else you can give 
him. He can get French cooking at a restaurant ; he 
can buy expensive wines at first-class hotels, if he 
wants them ; but the traveller, though ever so rich and 
ever so well-served at home, is, after all, nothing but 
a man as you are, and he is craving something that 
does n't seem like an hotel, — some bit of real, gen- 
uine heart-life. Perhaps he would like better than 
anything to show you the last photograph of his wife, 
or to read to you the great, round-hand letter of his 
ten-year-old which he has got to-day. He is ready to 
cry when he thinks of it. In this mood he goes to 
see you, hoping for something like home, and you 
first receive him in a parlor opened only on state 
occasions, and that has been circumstantially and 
exactly furnished, as the upholsterer assures you, as 
every other parlor of the kind in the city is furnished. 
You treat him to a dinner got up for the occasion, 
with hired waiters, — a dinner which it has taken 
Mrs. Smilax a week to prepare for, and will take her 
a week to recover from, — for which the baby has 
been snubbed and turned off, to his loud indignation, 
and your young four-year-old sent to his aunts. Your 
traveller eats your dinner, and finds it inferior, as ^ 



What is a Home? 75 

work of art, to other dinners, — a poor imitation. He 
goes away and criticises ; you hear of it, and resolve 
never to invite a foreigner again. But if you had 
given him a little of your heart, a little home-warmth 
and feeling, — if you had shown him your baby, and 
let him romp with your four-year-old, and eat a gen- 
uine dinner with you, — w^ould he have been false to 
that ? Not so likely. He wanted something real and 
human, — you gave him a bad dress-rehearsal, and 
dress-rehearsals always provoke criticism. 

Besides hospitality, there is, in a true home, a mis- 
sion of charity. It is a just law which regulates the 
possession of great or beautiful works of art in the 
Old World, that they shall in some sense be con- 
sidered the property of all who can appreciate. Fine 
grounds have hours when the public may be admitted, 
— pictures and statues may be shown to visitors ; and 
this is a noble charity. In the same manner the for- 
tunate individuals who have achieved the greatest of 
all human works of art should employ it as a sacred 
charity. How many, morally wearied, wandering, dis- 
abled, are healed and comforted by the warmth of a 
true home ! When a mother has sent her son to the 
temptations of a distant city, what news is so glad to 
her heart as that he has found some quiet family 
where he visits often and is made to feel at home ? 
How many young men have good women saved from 



y6 House and Home Papers. 

temptation and shipwreck by drawing them often to 
the sheltered corner by the fireside ! The poor artist, 

— the wanjjiering genius who has lost his way in this 
world, and stumbles like a child among hard realities, 

— the many men and women who, while they have 
houses, have no homes, — see from afar, in their dis- 
tant, bleak life-journey, the light of a true home-fire, 
and, if made welcome there, warm their stiffened 
limbs, and go forth stronger to their pilgrimage. Let 
those who have accomplished this beautiful and per- 
fect work of divine art be liberal of its influence. Let 
them not seek to bolt the doors and draw the cur- 
tains ; for they know not, and will never know till the 
future life, of the good they may do by the ministra- 
tion of this great charity of home. 

We have heard much lately of the restricted sphere 
of woman. We have been told how many spirits 
among women are of a wider, stronger, more heroic 
mould than befits the mere routine of housekeeping. 
It may be true that there are many women far too 
great, too wise, too high, for mere housekeeping. 
But where is the woman in any way too great or too 
high, or too wise, to spend herself in creating a 
home 1 What can any woman make diviner, higher, 
better.^ From such homes go forth all heroisms, all 
inspirations, all great deeds. Such mothers and such 
homes have made the heroes and martyrs, faithfuf 



What is a Home? 'jj 

unto death, who have given their precious lives to us 
during these three years of our agony ! 

Homes ire the work of art peculiar to the genius 
of woman. Man helps in this work, but woman leads ; 
:he hive is always in confusion without the queen-hte. 
But what a woman must she be who does this work 
perfectly! She comprehends all, she balances and 
arranges all ; all different tastes and temperaments 
5nd in her their rest, and she can unite at one hearth- 
stone the most discordant elements. In her is order, 
yet an order ever veiled and concealed by indulgence. 
None are checked, reproved, abridged of privileges 
by her love of system ; for she knows that order was 
made for the family, and not the family for order. 
Quietly she takes on herself what all others refuse or 
overlook. What the unwary disarrange she silently 
rectifies. Everybody in her sphere breathes easy, 
feels free ; and the driest twig begins in her sunshine 
to put out buds and blossoms. So quiet are her 
operations and movements, that none sees that it is 
she who holds all things in harmony ; only, alas, 
when she is gone, how many things suddenly ap- 
pear disordered, inharmonious, neglected ! All thesp 
threads have been smilingly held in her weak hand. 
Alas, if that is no longer there ! 

Can any woman be such a housekeeper without 
inspiration? No. Ir; the words of the old church- 



y8 House and Home Papers. 

service. " Her soul must ever have affiance in God." 
The New Jerusalem of a perfect home cometh down 
from God out of heaven. But to make such a home 
is ambition high and worthy enough for any woman, 
be she what she may. 

One thing more. Right on the threshold of all per- 
fection lies the cross to be taken up. No one can go 
over or around that cross in science or in art. With- 
out labor and self-denial neither Raphael nor Michel 
Angelo nor Newton was made perfect. Nor can man 
or woman create a true home who is not willing in the 
outset to embrace life heroically, to encounter labor 
and sacrifice. Only to such shall this divinest power 
be given to create on earth that which is the nearest 
image of heaven. 



IV. 

THE ECONOMY OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 

TALKING to you in this way once a month, O 
my confidential reader, there seems to be dan- 
ger, as in all intervals of friendship, that we shall not 
readily be able to take up our strain of conversation 
just where we left off. Suffer me, therefore, to remind 
you that the month past left us seated at the fireside, 
just as we had finished reading of what a home was, 
and how to make one. 

The fire had burned low, and great, solid hickory 
coals were winking dreamily at us from out their fluffy 
coats of white ashes, — just as if some household 
sprite there were opening now one eye and then the 
other, and looking in a sleepy, comfortable way at us. 

The close of my piece, about the good house 
mother, had seemed to tell on my little audience. 
Marianne had nestled close to her mother, and laid 
her head on her knee ; and though Jenny sat up 
straight as a pin, yet her ever-busy knitting was 
dropped in her lap, and I saw the glint of a tear in 
her quick, sparkling eye, — yes, actually a little bright 



8o House and Home Papers, 

bead fell upon her work ; whereupon she started up 
actively, and declared that the fire wanted just one 
more stick to make a blaze before bedtime ; and then 
there was such a raking among the coals, such an 
adjusting of the andirons, such vigorous arrangement 
of the wood, and such a brisk whisking of the hearth- 
brush, that it was evident Jenny had something on 
her mind. 

When all was done, she sat down again and looked 
straight into the blaze, which went dancing and crack- 
ling up, casting glances and flecks of light on our 
pictures and books, and making all the old, familiar 
furniture seem full of life and motion. 

" I think that 's a good piece," she said, decisively. 
" I think those are things that should be thought 
about." 

Now Jenny was the youngest of our flock, and 
therefore, in a certain way, regarded by my wife and 
me as perennially ^^ the baby " ; -and these little, old- 
fashioned, decisive ways of announcing her opinions 
seemed so much a part of her nature, so peculiarly 
" Jennyish," as I used to say, that my wife and I only 
exchanged amused glances over her head, when they 
occurred. 

In a general way, Jenny, standing in the full orb of 
her feminine instincts like Diana in the moon, rather 
looked down on all masculine views of women's mat- 



The Economy of the Beautiful, 8i 

ters as " tolerabiles ineptice " ; but towards her papa she 
had gracious turns of being patronizing to the last 
degree ; and one of these turns was evidently at its 
flood-tide, as she proceeded to say, — 

" / think papa is right, — that keeping house and 
having a home, and all that, is a very serious thing, 
and that people go into it with very little thought 
about it. I really think those things papa has been 
saying there ought to be thought about." 

" Papa," said Marianne, " I wish you would tell 
me exactly how you would spend that money you 
gave me for house-furnishing. I should like just your 
views." 

" Precisely," said Jenny, with eagerness ; " because 
it is just as papa says, — a sensible man, who has 
thought, and had experience, can't help having some 
ideas, even about women's affairs, that are worth 
attending to. I think so, decidedly." 

I acknowledged the compliment for my sex and 
myself with my best bow. 

" But then, papa," said Marianne, " I can't help 
feeling sorry that one can't live in such a way as to 
have beautiful things around one. I 'm sorry they 
must cost so much, and take so much care, for I am 
made so that I really want them. I do so like to see 
pretty things ! I do like rich carpets and elegant 
carved furniture, and fine china and cut-glass and 



82 House and Home Papers, 

silver. I can't bear mean, common-looking rooms. 
I should so like to have my house look beautiful ! " 

" Your house ought not to look mean and common, 
— your house ought to look beautiful," I replied. " It 
would be a sin and a shame to have it otherwise. No 
house ought to be fitted up for a future home without 
a strong and a leading reference to beauty in all its 
arrangements. If I were a Greek, I should say that 
the first household libation should be made to beauty ; 
but, being an old-fashioned Christian, I would say 
that he who prepares a home with no eye to beauty 
neglects the example of the great Father who has 
filled our earth-home with such elaborate ornament." 

" But then, papa, there 's the money ! " said Jenny, 
shaking her little head wisely. " You men don't think 
of that. You want us girls, for instance, to be pat- 
terns of economy, but we must always be wearing 
fresh, nice things j you abhor soiled gloves and worn 
shoes : and yet how is all this to be done without 
money ? And it 's just so in housekeeping. You sit 
in your arm-chairs and conjure up visions of all sorts 
of impossible things to be done ; but when mamma 
there takes out that little account-book, and figures 
away on the cost of things, where do the visions go ? " 

"You are mistaken, my little dear, and you talk 
just like a woman," — (this was my only way of 
revenging myself,) — "that is to say, you jump to 



The Economy of the Beautiful. 83 

conclusions, without sufficient knowledge. I main- 
tain that in house-furnishing, as well as woman-fur- 
nishing, there 's nothing so economical as beauty." 

" There 's one of papa's paradoxes ! " said Jenny. 

" Yes," said I, " that is my thesis, which I shall 
nail up over the mantel-piece there, as Luther nailed 
his to the church-door. It is time to rake up the fire 
now ; but to-morrow night I will give you a paper on 
the Economy of the Beautiful." 

« « * * * 

" Come, now we are to have papa's paradox," said 
Jenny, as soon as the tea-things had been carried out. 

Entre nouSy I must tell you that insensibly we had 
fallen into the habit of taking our tea by my study- 
fire. Tea, you know, is a mere nothing in itself, its 
only merit being its social and poetic associations, its 
warmth and fragrance, — and the more socially and 
informally it can be dispensed, the more in keeping 
with its airy and cheerful nature. 

Our circle was enlightened this evening by the 
cheery visage of Bob Stephens, seated, as of right, 
close to Marianne's work-basket. 

" You see. Bob," said Jenny, " papa has undertaken 
to prove that the most beautiful things are always the 
cheapest." 

" I 'm glad to hear that," said Bob, — " for there 's 
a carved antique bookcase and study-table that I have 



84 House and Home Papers, 

my eye on, and if this can in any way be made to 
appear — " 

" O, it won't t ; made to appear/' said Jenny, set- 
tling herself at her knitting, " only in some transcen- 
dental, poetic sense, such as papa can always make 
out. Papa is more than half a poet, and his truths 
turn out to be figures of rhetoric, when one comes to 
apply them to matters of fact." 

^* Now, Miss Jenny, please remember my subject 
and thesis," I replied, — " that in house-furnishing 
there is nothing so economical as beauty ; and I will 
make it good against all comers, not by figures of 
rhetoric, but by figures of arithmetic. I am going to 
be very matter-of-fact and commonplace in my details, 
and keep ever in view the addition-table. I will in- 
stance a case which has occurred under my own obser- 
vation." 

The Economy of the Beautiful. . 

Two of the houses lately built on the new land in 
Boston were bought by two friends, Philip and John. 
Philip had plenty of money, and paid the cash down 
for his house, without feeling the slightest vacancy 
in his pocket. John, who was an active, rising young 
man, just entering on a flourishing business, had ex- 
pended all his moderate savings for years in the 



The Economy of the Beautiful, 85 

purchase of his dwelling, and still had a mortgage 
remaining, which he hoped to clear off by his future 
successes. Philip begins the work of furnishing as 
people do with whom money is abundant, and who 
have simply to go from shop to shop and order all 
that suits their fancy and is considered ' the thing ' in 
good society. John begins to furnish with very little 
money. He has a wife and two little ones, and he 
wisely deems that to insure to them a well-built house, 
in an open, airy situation, with conveniences for warm- 
ing, bathing, and healthy living, is a wise beginning in 
life ; but it leaves him little or nothing beyond. 

Behold, then, Philip and his wife, well pleased, 
going the rounds of shops and stores in fitting up 
their new dwelling, and let us follow step by step. 
To begin with the wall-paper. Imagine a front and 
back parlor, with folding-doors, with t^o south win- 
dows on the front, and two looking on a back court, 
after the general manner of city houses. We will 
suppose they require about thirty rolls of wall-paper. 
Philip buys the heaviest French velvet, wdth gildings 
and traceries, at four dollars a roll. This, by the time 
it has been put on, with gold mouldings, according to 
the most established taste of the best paper-hangers, 
will bring the wall-paper of the two rooms to a figure 
something like two hundred dollars. Now they pro- 
ceed to the carpet-stores, and there are thrown at 



86 House and Home Papers, 

their feet by obsequious clerks velvets and Axmin- 
sters, with flowery convolutions and medallion-centres, 
as if the flower-gardens of the tropics were whirling 
in waltzes, with graceful lines of arabesque, — roses, 
callas, lilies, knotted, wreathed, twined, with blue and 
crimson and golden ribbons, dazzling marvels of color 
and tracery. There is no restraint in price, — four or 
six dollars a yard, it is all the same to them, — and 
soon a magic flower-garden blooms on the floors, at a 
cost of five hundred dollars. A pair of elegant rugs, 
at fifty dollars apiece, complete the inventory, and 
bring our rooms to the mark of eight hundred dollars 
for papering and carpeting alone. Now come the 
great mantel-mirrors for four hundred more, and our 
rooms progress. Then comes the upholsterer, and 
measures our four windows, that he may skilfully bar- 
ricade them from air and sunshine. The fortifications 
against heaven, thus prepared, cost, in the shape of 
damask, cord, tassels, shades, laces, and cornices, 
about two hundred dollars per window. To be sure, 
they make the rooms close and sombre as the grave ; 
but they are of the most splendid stuffs ; and if the 
sun would only reflect, he would see, himself, how 
foolish it was for him to try to force himself into a 
window guarded by his betters. If there is anything 
cheap and plebeian, it is sunshine and fresh air ! Be- 
^ hold us, then, with pht two rooms papered, carpeted, 



l^he Economy of the Beautiful, 8y 

and curtained for two thousand dollars ; and now are 
to be put in them sofas, lounges, etagbres, centre- 
tables, screens, chairs of every pattern and device, 
for which it is but moderate to allow a thousand more. 
We have now two parlors furnished at an outlay of 
three thousand dollars, without a single picture, a 
single article of statuary, a single object of Art of any 
kind, and without any light to see them by, if they 
were there. We must say for our Boston upholsterers 
and furniture-makers that such good taste generally 
reigns in their establishments that rooms furnished at 
hap-hazard from them cannot fail of a certain air of 
good taste, so far as the individual things are con- 
cerned. But the different articles we have supposed, 
having been ordered without reference to one another 
or the rooms, have, when brought together, no unity 
of effect, and the general result is scattering and con- 
fused. If asked how Philip's parlors look, your reply 
is, " O, the usual way of such parlors, — everything 
that such people usually get, — medallion-carpets, 
carved furniture, great mirrors, bronze mantel-orna- 
ments, and so on." The only impression a stranger 
receives, while waiting in the dim twilight of these 
rooms, is that their owner is rich, and able to get 
good, handsome things, such as all other rich people 
get. 

Now our friend John, as often happens in America, 



88 House and Home Papers, 

is moving in the same social circle with Philip, visiting 
the same people, — his house is the twin of the one 
Philip has been furnishing, and how shall he, with a 
few hundred dollars, make his rooms even presentable 
beside those which Philip has fitted up elegantly at 
three thousand ? 

Now for the economy of beauty. Our friend must 
make his prayer to the Graces, — for, if they cannot 
save him, nobody can. One thing John has to begin 
with, that rare gift to man, a wife with the magic 
cestus of Venus, — not around her waist, but, if such 
a thing could be, in her finger-ends. All that she 
touches falls at once into harmony and proportion. 
Her eye for color and form is intuitive : let her arrange 
a garret, with nothing but boxes, barrels, and cast-off 
furniture in it, and ten to one she makes it seem the 
most attractive place in the house. It is a veritable 
" gift of good faerie," this tact of beautifying and ar- 
ranging, that some women have, —-and, on the present 
occasion, it has a real, material value, that can be 
estimated in dollars and cents. Come with us and 
you can see the pair taking their survey of the yet 
unfurnished parlors, as busy and happy as a couple 
of bluebirds picking up the first sticks and straws for 
their nest. 

" There are two sunny windows to begin with," says 
the good fair)'^ with an appreciative glance. "That 
insures flowers all winter.'^ 



The Economy of the Beautiful, 89 

" Yes," says John ; " I never would look at a house 
without a good sunny exposure. Sunshine is the best 
ornament of a house, and worth an extra thousand a 
year." 

" Now for our wall-paper," says she. " Have you 
looked at wall-papers, John ? " 

" Yes ; we shall get very pretty ones for thirty-seven 
cents a roll ; all you want of a paper, you know, is 
to make a ground-tint to throw out your pictures and 
other matters, and to reflect a pleasant tone of light." 

*^Well, John, you know Uncle James says that a 
stone-color is the best, — but I can't bear those cold 
blue grays." 

*^ Nor I," says John. " If we must have gray, let 
it at least be a gray suffused with gold or rose-color, 
such as you see at evening in the clouds." 

" So I think," responds she ; " but, better, I should 
like a paper with a tone of buff, — something that 
produces warm yellowish reflections, and will almost 
make you think the sun is shining in cold gray weath- 
er ; and then there is nothing that lights up so cheer- 
fully in the evening. In short, John, I think the color 
of a zafferano rose will be just about the shade we 
want." 

" Well, I can find that, in good American paper, as 
I said before, at from thirty-seven to forty cents a roll. 
Then, our bordering : there 's an important question. 



90 House and Home Papers. 

for that must determine the carpet, the chairs, and 
everything else. Now what shall be the ground-tint 
of our rooms ? " 

" There are only two to choose between," says the 
lady, — "green and marroon : which is the best for the 
picture ? " 

" I think," says John, looking above the mantel- 
piece, as if he saw a picture there, — "I think a 
border of marroon velvet, with marroon furniture, is 
the best for the picture." 

" I think so too," said she ; " and then we will have 
that lovely marroon and crimson carpet that I saw at 
Lowe's ; — i^ is an ingrain, to be sure, but has a Brus- 
sels pattern, a mossy, mixed figure, of different shades 
of crimson ; it has a good warm, strong color, and 
when I come to cover the lounges and our two old 
arm-chairs with marroon rep^ it will make such a pretty 
effect." 

" Yes," said John ; " and then, you know, our pic- 
ture is so bright, it will light up the whole. Every- 
thing depends on the picture." 

Now as to "the picture," it has a story must be 
told. John, having been all his life a worshipper 
and adorer of beauty and beautiful things, had never 
passed to or from his business without stopping at the 
print-shop windows, and seeing a little of what was 
there. 



The Economy of the Beautiful, 91 

On one of these occasions he was smitten to the 
heart with the beauty of an autumn landscape, where 
the red maples and sumachs, the purple and crimson 
oaks, all stood swathed and harmonized together in 
the hazy Indian-summer atmosphere. There was a 
great yellow chestnut-tree, on a distant hill, which 
stood out so naturally that John instinctively felt his 
fingers tingling for a basket, and his heels alive with 
a desire to bound over on to the rustling hillside and 
pick up the glossy brown nuts. Everything was there 
of autumn, even to the golden-rod and purple asters 
and scarlet creepers in the foreground. 

John went in and inquired. It was by an unknown 
French artist, without name or patrons, who had just 
come to our shores to study our scenery, and this was 
the first picture he had exposed for sale. John had 
just been paid a quarter's salary; he bethought him 
of board-bill and washerwoman, sighed, and faintly 
offered fifty dollars. 

To his surprise he was taken up at once, and the 
picture became his. John thought himself dreaming. 
He examined his treasure over and over, and felt sure 
that it was the work of no amateur beginner, but of a 
trained hand and a true artist-soul. So he found his 
way to the studio of the stranger, and apologized for 
having got such a gem for so much less than its worth. 
^* It was all I could give, though," he said ; " and one 



92 House and Home Papers, 

who paid four times as much could not value it more.** 
And so John took one and another of his friends, with 
longer purses than his own, to the studio of the mod- 
est stranger ; and now^ his pieces command their full 
worth in the market, and he works with orders far 
ahead of his ability to execute, giving to the canvas 
the traits of American scenery as appreciated and felt 
by the subtile delicacy of the French mind, — our 
rural summer views, our autumn glories, and the 
dreamy, misty delicacy of our snowy winter land- 
scapes. Whoso would "*know the truth of the same, 
let him inquire for the modest studio of Morvillier, 
at Maiden, scarce a bow-shot from our Boston. 

This picture had always been the ruling star of 
John's house, his main dependence for brightening up 
his bachelor-apartments ; and when he came to the 
task of furbishing those same rooms for a fair occu- 
pant, the picture was still his mine of gold. For a 
picture, painted by a real artist, who studies Nature 
minutely and conscientiously, has something of the 
charm of the good Mother herself, — something of her 
faculty of putting on different aspects under diiferent 
lights. John and his wife had studied their picture at 
all hours of the day : they had seen how it looked 
when the morning sun came aslant the scarlet maples 
and made a golden shimmer over the blue mountains^ 
how it looked toned down in the cool shadows of after- 



The Economy of the Beautiful. 93 

noon, and how it warmed up in the sunset, and died 
off mysteriously into the twilight ; and now, when 
larger parlors were to be furnished, the picture was 
still the tower of strength, the rallying-point of their 
hopes. 

" Do you know, John," said the wife, hesitating, " I 
am really in doubt whether we shall not have to get 
at least a few new chairs and a sofa for our parlors ? 
They are putting in such splendid things at the other 
door that I am positively ashamed of ours ; the fact 
is, they look almost disreputable, — like a heap of 
rubbish." 

^' Well," said John, laughing, " I don't suppose all 
together sent to an auction-room would bring us fifty 
dollars, and yet, such as they are, they answer the 
place of better things for us ; and the fact is, Mary, 
the hard impassable barrier in the case is, that there 
really is no money to get any more^ 

"Ah, well, then, if there is n't, we must see what 
we can do with these, and summon all the good fairies 
to ou?aid," said Mary. " There 's your little cabinet- 
maker, John, will look over the things, and furbish 
whem up ; there 's that broken arm of the chair must 
be mended, and everything revarnished ; then I have 
found such a lovely rej>y of just the richest shade of 
marroon, inclining to crimson, and when we come to 
cover the lounges and arm-chairs and sofas and otto- 



94 House and Home Papers. 

mans all alike, you know they will be quite another 
thing." 

" Trust you for that, Mary ! By the by, I 've found 
1 nice little woman, who has worked on upholstery, 
who will come in by the day, and be the hands that 
shall execute the decrees of your taste." 

" Yes, I am sure we shall get on capitally. Do you 
know that I 'm almost glad we can't get new things ? 
it 's a sort of enterprise to see what we can do with 
old ones." 

" Now, you see, Mar}^," said John, seating himself 
on a lime-cask which the plasterers had left, and tak- 
ing out his memorandum-book, " you see, I Ve calcu- 
lated this thing all over ; I Ve found a way by which 
I can make our rooms beautiful and attractive without 
a cent expended on new furniture." 

"Well, let 'shear." 

" Well, my way is short and simple. We must put 
things into our rooms that people will look at, so that 
they will forget to look at the furniture, and never 
once trouble their heads about it. People never look 
at furniture so long as there is anything else to look 
at ; just as Napoleon, when away on one of his expe- 
ditions, being told that the French populace were 
getting disaffected, wrote back, 'Gild the dome des 
I?ivalides,' and so they gilded it, and the people, look- 
ing at that, forgot everything else." 



The Economy of the Beautiful, 95 

" But I 'm not clear yet," said Mary, " what is com- 
ing of this rhetoric." 

" Well, then, Mary, I '11 tell you. A suit of new 
carved black-walnut furniture, severe in taste and 
perfect in style, such as I should choose at David 
and Saul's, could not be got under three hundred dol- 
lars, and I have n't the three hundred to give. What^ 
then, shall we do ? We must fall back on our re- 
sources ; we must look over our treasures. We have 
our proof cast of the great glorious head of the Venus 
di Milo ; we have those six beautiful photographs of 
Rome, that Brown brought to us ; we have the great 
German lithograph of the San Sisto Mother and Child, 
and we have the two angel-heads, from the same ; we 
have that lovely golden twilight sketch of Headers; 
we have some sea-photographs of Bradford's ; we have 
an original pen-and-ink sketch by Billings ; and then, 
as before, we have ^ our picture.' What has been the 
use of our watching at the gates and waiting at the 
doors of Beauty all our lives, if she has n't thrown us 
out a crust now and then, so that we might have it for 
time of need ? Now, you see, Mary, we must make 
the toilet of our rooms just as a pretfy woman makes 
hers when money runs low, and she sorts and freshens 
her ribbons, and matches them to her hair and eyes, 
and, with a bow here, and a bit of fringe there, and a 
button somewhere else, dazzles us into thinking that 



g6 House and Home Papers, 

she has an infinity of beautiful attire. Our rooms are 
new and pretty of themselves, to begin with \ the tint 
of the paper, and the rich coloring of the border, 
corresponding with the furniture and carpets, will 
make them seem prettier. And now for arrangement. 
Take this front-room. I propose to fill those two 
recesses each side of the fireplace with my books, in 
their plain pine cases, just breast-high from the floor : 
they are stained a good dark color, and nobody need 
stick a pin in them to find out that they are not rose- 
wood. The top of these shelves on either side to be 
covered with the same stuff as the furniture, finished 
with a crimson fringe. On top of the shelves on one 
side of the fireplace I shall set our noble Venus di 
Milo, and I shall buy at Cicci's the lovely Clytie, and 
put it the other side. Then I shall get of Williams 
and Everett two of their chromo-lithographs, which 
give you all the style and charm of the best English 
water-color school. I will have the lovely Bay of 
Amalfi over my Venus, because she came from those 
suns and skies of Southern Italy, and I will hang 
Lake Como over my Clytie. Then, in the middle, 
over the fireplace, shall be 'our picture.* Over each 
door shall hang one of the lithographed angel-heads 
of the San Sisto, to watch our going-out and coming- 
in ; and the glorious Mother and Child shall hang 
opposite the Venus di Milo, to show how Greek and 



The Economy of the Beautiful, i)*j 

Christian unite in giving the noblest type to woman- 
hood. And then, when we have all our sketches and 
lithographs framed and hung here and there, and your 
flowers blooming as they always do, and your ivies 
wandering and rambling as they used to, and hanging 
in the most graceful ways and places, and all those 
little shells and ferns and vases, which you are always 
conjuring with, tastefully arranged, I '11 venture to say 
that our rooms will be not only pleasant, but beautiful, 
and that people will oftener say, ^ How beautiful ! ' 
when they enter, than if we spent three times the 
money on new furniture." 

In the course of a year after this conversation, one 
and another of my acquaintances were often heard 
speaking of John Merton's house. " Such beautiful 
rooms, — so charmingly furnished, — you must go and 
see them. What does make them so much pleasanter 
than those rooms in the other house, which have 
everything in them that money can buy ? " So said 
the folk, — for nine people out of ten only feel the 
effect of a room, and never analyze the causes from 
which it flows : they know that certain rooms seem 
dull and heavy and confused, but they don't know 
why ; that certain others seem cheerful, airy, and 
beautiful, but they know not why. The first excla- 
mation, on entering John's parlors, was so often, 
" How beautiful ! " that it became rather a byword 
5 G 



98 House and Home Pap en. 

in the family. Estimated by their mere money-value, 
the articles in the rooms were of very trifling worth j 
but as they stood arranged and combined, they had 
all the effect of a lovely picture. Although the statu- 
ary was only plaster, and the photographs and litho- 
graphs such as were all within the compass of limited 
means, yet every one of them was a good thing of its 
own kind, or a good reminder of some of the greatest 
works of Art. A good plaster cast is a daguerrotype, 
so to speak, of a great statue, though it may be bought 
for five or six dollars, while its original is not to be 
had for any namable sum. A chromo-lithograph of 
the best sort gives all the style and manner and effect 
of Turner or Stanfield, or any of the best of modern 
artists, though you buy it for five or ten dollars, and 
though the original would command a thousand guin- 
eas. The lithographs from Raphael's immortal pic- 
ture give you the results of a whole age of artistic 
culture, in a form within the compass of very humble 
means. There is now selling for ^v^ dollars at Wil- 
liams and Everetf s a photograph of Cheney's crayon 
drawing of the San Sisto Madonna and Child, which 
has the very spirit of the glorious original. Such a 
picture, hung against the wall of a child's room, would 
train its eye from infancy ; and yet how many will 
freely spend five dollars in embroidery on its dress, 
that say they cannot afford works of Art ! 



The Economy of the Beautiful. 99 

There was one advantage which John and his wife 
found in the way in which they furnished their house, 
that I have hinted at before : it gave freedom to their 
children. Though their rooms were beautiful, it was 
not with the tantalizing beauty of expensive and frail 
knick-knacks. Pictures hung against the wall, and 
statuary safely lodged on brackets, speak constantly 
to the childish eye, but are out of the reach of child- 
ish fingers, and are not upset by childish romps. They 
are not like china and crystal, liable to be used and 
abused by servants ; they do not wear out ; they are 
not spoiled by dust, nor consumed by moths. The 
beauty once there is always there ; though the mother 
be ill and in her chamber, she has no fears that she 
shall find it all wrecked and shattered. And this style 
of beauty, inexpensive as it is, compared with luxu- 
rious furniture, is a means of cultivation. No child 
is ever stimulated to draw or to read by an Axminster 
carpet or a carved centre-table ; but a room surrounded 
with photographs and pictures and fine casts suggests 
a thousand inquiries, stimulates the little eye and hand. 
The child is found with its pencil, drawing ; or he asks 
for a book on Venice, or wants to hear the history of 
the Roman Forum. 

But I have made my article too long. I will write 
another on the moral and intellectual effects of house^ 
furnishing. 



lOO House and Home Papers, 

*^ I have proved my point, Miss Jenny, have I not ? 
In house-furnishingj nothmg is more economical than 
ieauty" 

*-Yes, papa," said Jenny; "I give it up" 



V. 

RAKING UP THE FIRE. 

WE have a custom at our house which we call 
raking up the fire. That is to say, the last 
half-hour before bedtime, we draw in, shoulder to 
shoulder, around the last brands and embers of our 
hearth, which we prick up and brighten, and dispose 
for a few farewell flickers and glimmers. This is a 
grand time for discussion. Then we talk over parties, 
if the young people have been out of an evening, — a 
book, if we have been reading one ; we discuss and 
analyze characters, — give our views on all subjects, 
aesthetic, theological, and scientific, in a way most 
wonderful to hear ; and, in fact, we sometimes get so 
engaged in our discussions that every spark of the fire 
burns out, and we begin to feel ourselves shivering 
around the shoulders, before we can remember that 
it is bedtime. 

So, after the reading of my last article, we had a 
**raking-up talk," — to wit, Jenny, Marianne, and I, 
^vith Bob Stephens ; — my wife, still busy at her work- 
basket, sat at the table a little behind us Jenny, of 



102 House and Home Papers. 

course, opened the ball in her usual incisive man- 
ner. 

" But now, papa, after all you say in your piece 
there, I cannot help feeling, that, if I had the taste 
and the money too, it would be better than the taste 
alone with no money. I like the nice arrangements 
and the books and the drawings ; but I think all these 
would appear better still with really elegant furniture." 

" Who doubts that ? " said I. " Give me a large 
tub of gold coin to dip into, and the furnishing and 
beautifying of a house is a simple affair. The same 
taste that could make beauty out of cents and dimes 
could make it more abundantly out of dollars and 
eagles. But I have been speaking for those who have 
not, and cannot get, riches, and who wish to have 
agreeable houses ; and I begin in the outset by saying 
that beauty is a thing to be respected, reverenced, and 
devoutly cared for, — and then I say that beauty is 
CHEAP, nay, to put it so that the shrewdest Yankee 
will understand it, beauty is the cheapest thing 
YOU CAN have, because in many ways it is a substi* 
tute for expense. A few vases of flowers in a room, a 
few blooming, well-kept plants, a few prints framed in 
fanciful frames of cheap domestic fabric, a statuette, 
a bracket, an engraving, a pencil-sketch, above all, a 
few choice books, — all these arranged by a woman 
who has the gift in her finger-ends often produce such 



Raking up the Fire, 103 

an illusion on the mind's eye that one goes away with- 
out once having noticed that the cushion of the arm- 
chair was worn out, and that some veneering had 
fallen off the centre-table. 

" I have a friend, a schoolmistress, who lives in 
a poor little cottage enough, which, let alone of the 
Graces, might seem mean and sordid, but a few flower- 
seeds and a little weeding in the spring make it, all 
summer, an object which everybody stops to look at. 
Her aesthetic soul was at first greatly tried with the 
water-barrel which stood under the eaves spout, — a 
most necessary evil, since only thus could her scanty 
supply of soft water for domestic purposes be secured. 
One of the Graces, however, suggested to her a happy 
thought. She planted a row of morning-glories round 
the bottom of her barrel, and drove a row of tacks 
around the top, and strung her water-butt with twine, 
like a great harpsichord. A few weeks covered the 
twine with blossoming plants, which every morning 
were a mass of many-colored airy blooms, waving in 
graceful sprays, and looking at themselves in the water. 
The water-barrel, in fact, became a celebrated stroke 
of ornamental gardening, which the neighbors came to 
look at." 

" Well, but," said Jenny, " everybody has n't mam- 
ma's faculty with flowers. Flowers will grow for some 
people, and for some they won't. Nobody can see 



104 House and Home Papers. 

what mamma does so very much, but her plants always 
look fresh and thriving and healthy, — her things blos- 
som just when she wants them, and do anything else 
she wishes them to ; and there are other people that 
fume and fuss and try, and their things v/on't do any- 
thing at all. There 's Aunt Easygo has plant after 
plant brought from the greenhouse, and hanging-bas- 
kets, and all sorts of things ; but her plants grow 
yellow and drop their leaves, and her hanging-baskets 
get dusty and poverty-stricken, while mamma's go on 
flourishing as heart could desire." 

'*' I can tell you what your mother puts into her 
plants," said I, — "just what she has put into her 
children, and all her other home-things, — her heart. 
She loves them ; she lives in them ; she has in herself 
a plant-life and a plant-sympathy. She feels for them 
as if she herself were a plant ; she anticipates their 
wants, — always remembers them without an effort, 
and so the care flows to them daily and hourly. She 
hardly knows when she does the things that make 
them grow, — but she gives them a minute a hundred 
times a day. She moves this nearer the glass, — draws 
that back, — detects some thief of a worm on one, — 
digs at the root of another, to see why it droops, — 
washes these leaves, and sprinkles those, — waters, 
and refrains from watering, all with the habitual care 
of love. Your mother herself does n't know why her 



Raking up the Fire. 105 

plants grow j it takes a philosopher and a writer for 
the 'Atlantic' to tell her what the cause is." 

Here I saw my wife laughing over her work-basket 
as she answered, — 

" Girls, one of these days, /will write an article for 
the ' Atlantic,' that your papa need not have all the 
say to himself: however, I believe he has hit the nail 
on the head this time." 

" Of course he has," said Marianne. " But, mam- 
ma, I am afraid to begin to depend much on plants 
for the beauty of my rooms, for fear I should not have 
your gift, — and of all forlorn and hopeless things in 
a room, ill-kept plants are the most so." 

" I would not recommend," said I, " a young house- 
keeper, just beginning, to rest much for her home 
ornament on plant-keeping, unless she has an experi- 
ence of her own love and talent in this line, which 
makes her sure of success ; for plants will not thrive, 
if they are forgotten or overlooked, and only tended 
in occasional intei-vals ; and, as Marianne says, neg- 
lected plants are the most forlorn of all things." 

"But, papa," said Marianne, anxiously, "there, in 
those patent parlors of John's that you wrote of, 
flowers acted a great part." 

" The charm of those parlors of John's may be 
chemically analyzed," I said. "In the first place, 
there is sunshine, a thing that always affects the hu 
5* 



io6 House and Home Papers. 

man n?tves of happiness. AVhy else is it that people 
are always so glad to see the sun after a long storm ? 
why are bright days matters of such congratulation ? 
Sunshine fills a house with a thousand beautiful and 
fanciful effects of light and shade, — with soft, lumi- 
nous, reflected radiances, that give picturesque effects 
to the pictures, books, statuettes of an interior. John, 
happily, had no money to buy brocatelle curtains, — 
and besides this, he loved sunshine too much to buy 
them, if he could. He had been enough with artists 
to know that heavy damask curtains darken precisely 
that part of the window where the light proper for 
pictures and statuary should come in, namely, the up- 
per part. The fashionable system of curtains lights 
only the legs of the chairs and the carpets, and leaves 
all the upper portion of the room in shadow. John's 
windows have shades which can at pleasure be drawn 
down from the top or up from the bottom, so that the 
best light to be had may always_be arranged for his 
little interior." 

"Well, papa," said Marianne, "in your chemical 
analysis of John's rooms, what is the next thing to 
the sunshine?" 

" The next," said I, " is harmony of color. The 
wall-paper, the furniture, the carpets, are of tints that 
harmonize with one another. This is a grace in 
rooms always, and one often neglected. The French 



Raking up the Fire, \o^ 

have an expressive phrase with reference to articles 
which are out of accord, — they say that they swear 
at each other. 1 have been in rooms where I seemed 
to hear the wall-paper swearing at the carpet, and the 
carpet swearing back at the wall-paper, and each ar- 
ticle of furniture swearing at the rest. These appoint- 
ments may all of them be of the most expensive kind, 
but with such dis-harmony no arrangement can ever 
produce anything but a vulgar and disagreeable effect. 
On the other hand, I have been in rooms where all 
the material was cheap, and the furniture poor, but 
where, from some instinctive knowledge of the recij>- 
rocal effect of colors, everything was harmonious, and 
produced a sense of elegance. 

"I recollect once travelling on a Western canal 
through a long stretch of wilderness, and stopping to 
spend the night at an obscure settlement of a dozen 
houses. We were directed to lodgings in a common 
frame-house at a little distance, where, it seemed, the 
only hotel was kept. When we entered the parlor, 
we were struck with utter amazement at its prettiness, 
which affected us before we began to ask ourselves 
how it came to be pretty. It was, in fact, only one 
of the miracles of harmonious color working with 
very simple materials. Some woman had been busy 
there, who had both eyes and fingers. The sofa, the 
common wooden rocking-chairs, and some ottomans, 



io8 House and Home Papers. 

probably made of old soap-boxes, were all covered 
with American nankeen of a soft yellowish-brown, 
with a bordering of blue print. The window-shades, 
the table-cover, and the piano-cloth, all repeated the 
same colors, in the same cheap material. A simple 
straw matting was laid over the floor, and, with a few 
books, a vase of flowers, and one or two prints, the 
room had a home-like, and even elegant air, that 
struck us all the more forcibly from its contrast with 
the usual tawdry, slovenly style of such parlors. 

*' The means used for getting up this effect were 
the most inexpensive possible, — simply the following- 
out, in cheap material, a law of uniformity and har- 
mony, which always will produce beauty. In the 
same manner, I have seen a room furnished, whose 
effect was really gorgeous in color, where the only 
materials used were Turkey-red cotton and a simple 
ingrain carpet of corresponding color. 

" Now, you girls have been busy lately in schemes 
for buying a velvet carpet for the new parlor that is to 
be, and the only points that have seemed to weigh in 
the council were that it was velvet, that it was cheaper 
than velvets usually are, and that it was a genteel 
pattern." 

"Now, papa," said Jenny, "what ears you have 
We thought you were reading all the time ! " 

" I see what you are going to say," said Marianne; 



Racing up the Fire. 109 

"You think that we have not once mentioned the 
consideration which should determine the carpet, — 
whether it will harmonize with our other things. But, 
you see, papa, we don't really know what our other 
things are to be." 

"Yes," said Jenny, "and Aunt Easygo said it was 
an unusually good chance to get a velvet carpet." 

" Yet, good as the chance is, it costs just twice as 
much as an ingrain." 

" Yes, papa, it does." 

" And you are not sure that the effect of it, after 
you get it down, will be as good as a well-chosen in- 
grain one." 

" That 's true," said Marianne, reflectively. 

" But, then, papa," said Jenny, " Aunt Easygo said 
she never heard of such a bargain ; only think, two 
dollars a yard for a velvet P^ 

" And why is it two dollars a yard ? Is the man a 
personal friend, that he wishes to make you a present 
of a dollar on the yard ? or is there some reason why 
it is undesirable ? " said I. 

" Well, you know, papa, he said those large patterns 
were not so salable." 

" To tell the truth," said Marianne, " I never did 
like the pattern exactly ; as to uniformity of tint, it 
might match with anything, for there 's every color of 
the rainbow in it." 



no House and Home Papers, 

"You see, papa, it's a gorgeous flower-pattern," 
said Jenny. 

" Well, Marianne, how many yards of this wonder- 
fully cheap carpet do you want ? " 

" AVe want sixty yards for both rooms," said Jenny, 
always primed with statistics. 

"That will be a hundred and twenty dollars," I 
said. 

" Yes," said Jenny ; " and we went over the figures 
together, and thought we could make it out by econo- 
mizing in other things. Aunt Easygo said that the 
carpet was half the battle, — that it gave the air to 
everything else." 

" Well, Marianne, if you want a man's advice in the 
case, mine is at your service." 

" That is just what I want, papa." 

" Well, then, my dear, choose your wall-papers and 
borderings, and, when they are up, choose an ingrain 
carpet to harmonize with them, and adapt your furni- 
ture to the same idea. The sixty dollars that you 
save on your carpet spend on engravings, chromo- 
lithographs, or photographs of some really good works 
of Art, to adorn your walls." 

" Papa, I '11 do it," said Marianne. 

" My little dear," said I, " your papa may seem 
to be a sleepy old book-worm, yet he has his eyes 
open. Do you think I don't know why my girls 



Raking up the Fire, iii 

have the credit of being the best-dressed girls on 
the street?" 

" O papa ! " cried out both girls in a breath. 

" Fact, that ! " said Bob, with energy, pulling at his 
mustache. " Everybody talks about your dress, and 
wonders how you make it out." 

" Well," said I, " I presume you do not go into a 
shop and buy a yard of ribbon because it is selling at 
half-price, and put it on without considering complex- 
ion, eyes, hair, and shade of the dress, do you ? " 

" Of course we don't ! " chimed in the duo, with 
energy. 

" Of course you don't. Have n't I seen you mm- 
cing down-stairs, with all your colors harmonized, 
even to your gloves and gaiters ? Now, a room must 
be dressed as carefully as a lady." 

"Well, I 'm convinced," said Jenny, "that papa 
knows how to make rooms prettier than Aunt Easygo ; 
but then she said this was cheapo because it would out- 
last two common carpets." 

" But, as you pay double price," said I, " I don't 
see that. Besides, I would rather, in the course of 
twenty years, have two nice, fresh ingrain carpets, of 
just the color and pattern that suited my rooms, than 
labor along with one ill-chosen velvet that harmonized 
with nothing." 

" T give it up," said Jenny ; " I give it up." 



112 House and Home Papers, 

" Now, understand me," said I ; " I am not tra- 
ducing velvet or Brussels or Axminster. I admit that 
more beautiful effects can be found in those goods than 
in the humbler fabrics of the carpet-rooms. Nothing 
would delight me more than to put an unlimited credit 
to Marianne's account, and let her work out the prob- 
lems of harmonious color in velvet and damask. All 
I have to say is, that certain unities of color, certain 
general arrangements, will secure very nearly as good 
general effects in either material. A library with a 
neat, mossy green carpet on the floor, harmonizing 
with wall-paper and furniture, looks generally as well, 
whether the mossy green is made in Brussels or in 
ingrain. In the carpet-stores, these two materials 
stand side by side in the very same pattern, and one 
is often as good for the purpose as the other. A lady 
of my acquaintance, some years since, employed an 
artist to decorate her parlors. The walls being fres- 
coed and tinted to suit his ideal, he immediately 
issued his decree that her splendid velvet carpets 
must be sent to auction, and others bought of certain 
colors, harmonizing with the walls. Unable to find 
exactly the color and pattern he wanted, he at last 
had the carpets woven in a neighboring factory, where, 
as yet, they had only the art of weaving ingrains. 
Thus was the material sacrificed at once to the har 
mony." 



Raking up the Fire. 113 

I remarked, in passing, that this was before Bige- 
low's mechanical genius had unlocked for America the 
higher secrets of carpet-weaving, and made it possible 
to have one's desires accomplished in Brussels or vel- 
vet. In those days, English carpet-weavers did not 
send to America for their looms, as they now do. 

*^ But now to return to my analysis of John's rooms. 

"Another thing which goes a great way towards 
giving them their agreeable air is the books in them. 
Some people are fond of treating books as others do 
children. One room in the house is selected, and 
every book driven into it and kept there. Yet nothing 
makes a room so home-like, so companionable, and 
gives it such an air of refinement, as the presence of 
books. They change the aspect of a parlor from that 
of a mere reception-room, where visitors perch for a 
transient call, and give it the air of a room where one 
feels like taking off one's things to stay. It gives the 
appearance of permanence and repose and quiet fel- 
lowship ; and next to pictures on the walls, the many- 
colored bindings and gildings of books are the most 
agreeable adornment of a room." 

" Then, Marianne," said Bob, " we have something 
to start with, at all events. There are my English 
Classics and English Poets, and my uniform editions 
of Scott and Thackeray and Macaulay and Prescott 
and Indng and Longfellow and Lowell and Hawthorne 

H 



ri4 House and Home Papers. 

and Holmes and a host more. We really have some- 
thing pretty there." 

" You are a lucky girl," I said, " to have so much 
secured. A girl brought up in a house full of bocks, 
always able to turn to this or that author and look for 
any passage or poem when she thinks of it, does n't 
know what a blank a house without books might be." 

" Well," said Marianne, " mamma and I were count- 
ing over my treasures the other day. Do you know, I 
have one really fine old engraving, that Bob says is 
quite a genuine thing ; and then there is that pencil- 
sketch that poor Schone made for me the month 
before he died, — it is truly artistic." 

"And I have a couple of capital things of Land- 
seer's," said Bob. 

" There 's no danger that your rooms will not be 
pretty," said I, " now you are fairly on the right track." 

" But, papa," said Marianne, " I am troubled about 
one thing. My love of beauty runs into everything. 
I want pretty things for my table, — and yet, as you 
say, servants are so careless, one cannot use such 
things freely without great waste." 

"For my part," said my wife, "I believe in best 
china, to be kept carefully on an upper-shelf, and taken 
down for high-days and holidays ; it may be a super- 
stition, but I beUeve in it. It must never be taken 
out except when the mistress herself can see that it is 



Raking up the Fire, 115 

safely cared for. My mother always washed her china 
herself; and it was a very pretty social ceremony, 
after tea was over, while she sat among us washing 
her pretty cups, and wiping them on a fine damask 
towel." 

" With all my heart," said I ; " have your best china, 
and venerate it, — it is one of the loveliest of domestic 
superstitions ; only do not make it a bar to hospitality, 
and shrink from having a friend to tea with you, unless 
you feel equal to getting up to the high shelf where 
you keep it, getting it down, washing, and putting it 
up again. 

" But in serving a table, I say, as I said of a house, 
beauty is a necessit}^, and beauty is cheap. Because 
you cannot afford beauty in one form, it does not fol- 
low that you cannot have it in another. Because one 
cannot afford to keep up a perennial supply of delicate 
china and crystal, subject to the accidents of raw, 
untrained servants, it does not follow that the every- 
day table need present a sordid assortment of articles 
chosen simply for cheapness, while the whole capacity 
of the purse is given to the set forever locked away 
for state-occasions. 

"A table-service, all of simple white, of graceful 
forms, even though not of china, if arranged with care, 
with snowy, well-kept table-linen, clear glasses, and 
bright American plate in place of solid silver, may be 



Ii6 House and Home Papers, 

made to look inviting ; add a glass of flowers every 
day, and your table may look pr':tty ; — and it is far 
more important that it should look pretty for the 
family every day than for company once in two 
weeks." 

" I tell my girls," said my wife, " as the result of 
my experience, you may have your pretty china and 
your lovely fanciful articles for the table only so long 
as you can take all the care of them yourselves. As 
soon as you get tired of doing this, and put them into 
the hands of the trustiest servants, some good, well- 
meaning creature is sure to break her heart and your 
own and your very pet darling china pitcher all in one 
and the same minute ; and then her frantic despair 
leaves you not even the relief of scolding." 

" I have become perfectly sure," said I, " that there 
are spiteful little brownies, intent on seducing good 
women to sin, who mount guard over the special idols 
of the china-closet. If you hear a crash, and a loud 
Irish wail from the inner depths, you never think 
•of its being a yellow pie-plate, or that dreadful one- 
handled tureen that you have been wishing were 
broken these five years ; no, indeed, — it is sure to 
be the lovely painted china bowl, wreathed with morn- 
ing-glories and sweet-peas, or the engraved glass gob- 
let, with quaint old-English initials. China sacrificed 
must be a great means of saintship to women. Pope, 



Raking up the Fire, 117 

I think, puts it as the crowning grace of his perfect 
woman, that she is 

'Mistress of herself, though china fall.'" 

" I ought to be a saint by this time, then," said 
mamma; "for in the course of my days I have ]ost 
so many idols by breakage, and peculiar accidents that 
seemed by a special fatality to befall my prettiest and 
most irreplaceable things, that in fact it has come to 
be a superstitious feeling now with which I regard 
anything particularly pretty of a breakable nature." 

"Well," said Marianne, "unless one has a great 
deal of money, it seems to me that the investment in 
these pretty fragilities is rather a poor one." 

" Yet," said I, " the principle of beauty is never so 
captivating as when it presides over the hour of daily 
meals. I would have the room where they are served 
one of the pleasantest and sunniest in the house. I 
would have its coloring cheerful, and there should be 
companionable pictures and engravings on the walls. 
Of all things, I dislike a room that seems to be kept 
like a restaurant, merely to eat in. I like to see in a 
dining-room something that betokens a pleasant sit- 
ting-room at other hours. I like there some books, a 
comfortable sofa or lounge, and all that should make 
it cosey and inviting. The custom in some families, 
»f adoping for the daily meals one of the two parlors 



Ii8 House and Home Papers. 

which a city-house furnishes has often seemed to me 
a particularly happy one. You take your meals, then, 
in an agreeable place, surrounded by the little pleas- 
ant arrangements of your daily sitting-room ; and after 
the meal, if the lady of the house does the honors of 
her own pretty china herself, the office may be a pleas- 
ant and social one. 

" But in regard to your table-service I have my 
advice at hand. Invest in pretty table-linen, in deli- 
cate napkins, have your vase of flowers, and be guided 
by the eye of taste in the choice and arrangement of 
even the every-day table-articles, and have no ugly 
things when you can have pretty ones by taking a 
little thought. If you are sore tempted with lovely 
china and crystal, too fragile to last, too expensive to 
be renewed, turn away to a print-shop and comfort 
yourself by hanging around the walls of your dining- 
room beauty that will not break or fade, that will meet 
vour eye from year to year, though plates, tumblers, 
and tea-sets successively vanish. There is my advice 
for you, Marianne." 

At the same time, let me say, in parenthesis, that 
my wife, whose weakness is china, informed me that 
niglit when we were by ourselves, that she was order- 
ing secretly a tea-set as a bridal gift for Marianne, 
every cup of which was to be exquisitely painted with 
the wild-flowers of America, from designs of her own. 



Raking up the Fire, 119 

— a thing, by the by, that can now be very nicely exe- 
cuted in our country, as one may find by looking in at 
our friend Briggs's on School Street " It will last her 
all her life," she said, " and always be such a pleasure 
to look at, — and a pretty tea-table is such a pretty 
sight ! " So spoke Mrs. Crowfield, " unweaned from 
china by a thousand falls." She spoke even with tears 
in her eyes. Verily, these women are harps of a thou- 
sand strings ! 

But to return to my subject. 
. " Finally and lastly," I said, " in my analysis and 
explication of the agreeableness of those same parlors, 
comes the crowning grace, — their homeliness. By 
homeliness I mean not ugliness, as the word is apt to 
be used, but the air that is given to a room by being 
really at home in it. Not the most skilful arrange- 
ment can impart this charm. 

" It is said that a king of France once remarked, — • 
* My son, you must seem to love your people.' 

" * Father, how shall I seem to love them ? ' 

" ^ My son, you must love them.' 

" So to make rooms seem home-like you must be at 
home in them. Human light and warmth are so want- 
ing in some rooms, it is so evident that they are never 
used, that you can never be at ease there. In vain 
the house-maid is taught to wheel the sofa and turn 
chair towards chair ; in vain it is attempted to imitate 
a negligent arrangement of the centre-table. 



I20 House and Home Papers. 

" Books that have really been read and laid down, 
chairs that have really been moved here and there in 
the animation of social contact, have a sort of human 
vitality in them ; and a room in which people really 
live and enjoy is as different from a shut-up apartment 
as a live woman from a wax image. 

" Even rooms furnished without taste often become 
charming from this one grace, that they seem to let 
you into the home-life and home-current. You seem 
to understand in a moment that you are taken into 
the family, and are moving in its inner circles, and 
not revolving at a distance in some outer court of the 
gentiles. 

" How many people do we call on from year to year 
and know no more of their feelings, habits, tastes, 
family ideas and ways, than if they lived in Kamtschat- 
ka ! And why ? Because the room which they call a 
front-parlor is made expressly so that you never shall 
know. They sit in a back-room, — work, talk, read, 
perhaps. After the servant has let you in and opened 
a crack of the shutters, and while you sit waiting for 
them to change their dress and come in, you speculate 
as to what they may be doing. From some distant 
regi on, the laugh of a child, the song of a canary-bird, 
*"eaches you, and then a door claps hastily to. Do 
they love plants ? Do they write letters, sew, em- 
broider, crochet ? Do they ever romp and frolic ? 



Raking up the Fire, 12 1 

What books do they read ? Do they sketch or paint ? 
Of all these possibilities the mute and muffled room 
says nothing. A sofa and six chairs, two ottomans 
fresh fi'om the upholsterer^s, a Erusselr carpet, a cen- 
tre-table with four gilt Books of Beauty on it, a mantei- 
clock from Paris, and two bronze vases, — all these 
tell you only in frigid tones, ^ This is the best room,' 
— only that, and nothing more, — and soon she trips 
in in her best clothes, and apologizes for keeping you 
waiting, asks how your mother is, and you remark that 
it is a pleasant day, — and thus the acquaintance pro- 
gresses from year to year. One hour in the little back- 
room, where the plants and canary-bird and children 
are, might have made you fast friends for life ; but as 
it is, you care no more for them than for the gilt clock 
on the mantel 

"And now, girls," said I, pulling a paper out of my 
pocket, "you must know that your father is getting 
to be famous by means of these ^ House and Home 
Papers.* Here is a letter I have just received: — 



u c 



Most Excellent Mr. Crowfield, — Your 
thoughts have lighted into our family-circle, and 
echoed from our fireside. We all feel the force of 
them, and are delighted with the felicity of your treat- 
ment of the topic you have chosen. You have taken 
hold of a subject that lies deep in our hearts, in a 
6 



122 House and Home Papers, 

genial, temperate, and convincing spirit. All muit 
acknowledge the power of your sentiments upon their 
imaginations ; — if they could only trust to them in 
actual life ! There is the rub. 

" ' Omitting further upon these points, there is a 
special feature of your articles upon which we wish 
to address you. You seem as yet (v/e do not know, 
of course, what you may hereafter do) to speak only 
of homes whose conduct depends upon the help of 
servants. Now your principles apply, as some of us 
\vell conceive, to nearly all classes of society ; yet 
most people, to take an impressive hint, must have 
their portraits drawn out more exactly. We therefore 
hope that you will give a reasonable share of your 
attention to us who do not employ servants, so that 
you may ease us of some of our burdens, which, in 
spite of common sense, we dare not throw off. For 
instance, we have company, — a friend from afar, (per- 
haps wealthy,) or a minister, ox some other man of 
note. What do we do ? Sit down and receive our 
visitor with all good-will and the freedom of a home ? 
No ; we (the lady of the house) flutter about to clear 
up things, apologizing about this, that, and the other 
condition of unpreparedness, and, having settled the 
\nsitor in the parlor, set about marshalling the ele- 
ments of a grand dinner or supper, such as no person 
but a gourmand wants to sit down to, when at home 



Raking up the Fire, 123 

and comfortable ; and in getting up this meal, clearing 
away, and washing the dishes, we use up a good half 
of the time which our guest spends with us. We have 
spread ourselves, and shown him what we could do ; 
but what a paltry, heart-sickening achievement ! Now, 
good Mr. Crowfield, thou friend of the robbed and 
despairing, wilt thou not descend into our purgatorial 
circle, and tell the world what thou hast seen there of 
doleful remembrance ? Tell us how we, who must do 
and desire to do our own work, can show forth in our 
homes a homely, yet genial hospitality, and entertain 
our guests without making a fuss and huir.y-burly, and 
seeming to be anxious for their sake about many 
things, and spending too much time getting meals, 
as if eating were the chief social pleasure. Won't you 
do this, Mr. Crowfield ? 

" ' Yours beseechingly, 

"'R. H. A.'" 

'^ That 's a good letter," said Jenny. 

" To be sure it is," said I. 

" And shall you answer it, papa ? " 

" In the very next ^ Atlantic,' you may be sure I 
shall. The class that do their own work are the 
strongest, the most numerous, and, taking one thing 
with another, quite as well cultivated a class as any 
other. They are the anomaly of our country, — the 



124 House and Home Papers. 

disHnctive feature of the new , society that we are 
building up here ; and if we are to accomplish our 
national destiny, that class must increase rather than 
diminish. I shall certainly do my best to answer the 
very sensible and pregnant questions of that letter." 

Here Marianne shivered and drew up a shawl, and 
Jenny gaped; my wife folded up the garment in 
which she had set the last stitch, and the clock 
struck tw-elve. 

Bob gave a low whistle. "Who knew it was so 
late?" 

" Wc have idlked the fire fairly out," said Jenny. 



VI. 

THE LADY WHO DOES HER OWN WORK. 

** TV /FY dear Chris," said my wife, "isn't it time 
^^-i- to be writing the next 'House and Home 
Paper'?" 

I was lying back in my study-chair, with my heels 
luxuriously propped on an ottoman, reading for the 
two-hundredth time Hawthorne's " Mosses from an 
Old Manse," or his "Twice-Told Tales," I forget 
which, — I only know that these books constitute 
my cloud-land, where I love to sail away in dreamy 
quietude, forgetting the war, the price of coal and 
flour, the rates of exchange, and the rise and fall of 
gold. AVhat do all these things matter, as seen from 
those enchanted gardens in Padua where the weird 
Rappaccini tends his enchanted plants, and his gor- 
geous daughter fills us with the light and magic of 
her presence, and saddens us with the shadowy alle- 
goric mystery of her preternatural destiny ? But my 
wife represents the positive forces of time, place, and 
number in our family, and, having also a chronologi- 
cal head, she knows the day of the Tnpnth, and there- 



126 House and Home Papers, 

fore gently reminded me that by inevitable dates the 
time drew near for preparing my — which is it now, 
May or June number ? 

" Well, my dear, you are right," I said, as by an ex- 
ertion I came head-uppermost, and laid down the 
fascinating volume. " Let me see, what was I to 
write about?" 

" Why, you remember you were to answer that let- 
ter from the lady who does her own work." 

" Enough ! " said I, seizing the pen with alacrity ; 
"you have hit the exact phrase : — 

" * The lady who does her own work^ " 

America is the only country where such a title is 
possible, — the only country where there is a class of 
women who may be described as ladies who do their 
own work. By a lady we mean a woman of educa- 
tion, cultivation, and refinement, of liberal tastes and 
ideas, who, without any very material additions or 
changes, would be recognized as a lady in any circle 
of the Old World or the New. 

\\Tiat I have said is, that the existence of such a 
class is a fact peculiar to American society, a clear, 
plain result of the new principles involved in the doc- 
trine of universal equality. 

When the colonists first came to this country, of 
however mixed ingredients their ranks might have 



l^he Lady who does her own Work. 127 

Deen composed, and however imbued with the spirit 
of feudal and aristocratic ideas, the discipline of the 
wilderness soon brought them to a democratic level ; 
the gentleman felled the wood for his log-cabin side 
by side with the ploughman, and thews and sinews 
rose in the market. " A man was deemed honorable 
in proportion as he lifted his hand upon the high 
trees of the forest." So in the interior domestic 
circle. Mistress and maid, living in a log-cabin to- 
gether, became companions, and sometimes the maid, 
as the more accomplished and stronger, took prece- 
dence of the mistress. It became natural and un- 
avoidable that children should begin to work as early 
as they were capable of it. The result was a genera- 
tion of intelligent people brought up to labor from 
necessity, but turning on the problem of labor the 
acuteness of a disciplined brain. The mistress, out- 
done in sinews and muscles by her maid, kept her 
superiority by skill and contrivance. If she could 
not lift a pail of water, she could invent methods 
which made lifting the pail unnecessary, — if she 
could not take a hundred steps without weariness, 
she could make twentv answer the purpose of a hun- 
dred. 

Slavery, it is true, was to some extent introduced 
into New England, but it never suited the genius of 
the people, never struck deep root, or spread so as to 



128 House and Home Papers, 

choke the good seed of self-helpfulness. Many were 
opposed to it from conscientious principle, — many 
from far-sighted thrift, and from a love of thorough- 
ness and well-doing which despised the rude, un- 
skilled work of barbarians. People, having once felt 
the thorough neatness and beauty of execution which 
came of free, educated, and thoughtful labor, could 
not tolerate the clumsiness of slavery. Thus it came 
to pass that for many years the rural population of 
New England, as a general rule, did their own work, 
both out doors and in. If there were a black man or 
black woman or bound girl, they were emphatically 
only the helps^ following humbly the steps of master 
and mistress, and used by them as instruments of 
lightening certain portions of their toil. The mas- 
ter and mistress with their children were the head 
workers. 

Great merriment has been excited in the Old Coun- 
try, because years ago the first English travellers 
found that the class of persons by them denominated 
servants were in America denominated help or help- 
ers. But the term was the very best exponent of the 
state of ; society. There were few servants, in the 
European sense of the word ; there was a society of 
educated workers, where all were practically equal, 
and where, if there was a deficiency in one family 
and an excess in another, a helper^ not a servant, was 



The Lady who does her own Work, 129 

hired. Mrs. Browne, who has six sons and no daugh- 
ters, enters into agreement with Mrs. Jones, who has 
six daughters and no sons. She borrows a daughter, 
and pays her good wages to help in her domestic toil, 
and sends a son to help the labors of Mr. Jones. 
These two young people go into the families in which 
they are to be employed in all respects as equals and 
companions, and so the work of the community is 
equalized. Hence arose, and for many years con- 
tinued, a state of society more nearly solving than 
an)^ other ever did the problem of combining the 
highest culture of the mind with the highest culture 
of the muscles and the physical faculties. 

Then were to be seen families of daughters, hand- 
some, strong females, rising each day to their in-door 
work with cheerful alertness, — one to sweep the 
room, another to make the fire, while a third prepared 
the breakfast for the father and brothers who were 
going out to manly labor; and they chatted mean- 
while of books, studies, embroidery, discussed the last 
new poem, or some historical topic started by graver 
reading, or perhaps a rural ball that was to come off 
the next week. They spun with the book tied to 
the disiaif ; they wove ; they did all manner of fine 
needlework ; they made lace, painted flov/ers, and, in 
short, in the boundless consciousness of activity, in- 
vention, and perfect health, set themselves to any 



130 House and Home Papers, 

work they had ever read or thought of. A bride in 
those days was married with sheets and table-cloths 
of her own weaving, with counterpanes and toilet- 
covers wrought in divers embroidery by her own and 
her sisters' hands. The amount of fancy-work done 
in our days by girls who have nothing else to do will 
not equal what was done by these, who performed be- 
sides, among them, the whole work of the family. 

For many years these habits of life characterized 
the majority of our rural towns. They still exist 
among a class respectable in numbers and position, 
though perhaps not as happy in perfect self-satisfac- 
tion and a conviction of the dignity and desirableness 
of its lot as in former days. Human nature is above 
all things - — lazy. Every one confesses in the ab- 
stract that exertion which brings out all the powers 
of body and mind is the best thing for us all ; but 
practically most people do all they can to get rid of 
it, and as a general rule nobody does much more than 
circumstances drive him to do. Even I would not 
write this article, were not the publication-day hard 
on my heels. I should read Hawthorne and Emer- 
son and Holmes, and dream in my arm-chair, and 
project in the clouds those lovely unwritten stories 
that curl and veer and change like mist-wreaths in the 
sun. So, also, however dignified, however invigorat- 
ing, however really desirable are habits of life involv- 



The Lady who does her own Work, 131 

ing daily physical toil, there is a constant evil demon 
at every one's elbow, seducing him to evade it, or to 
bear its weight with sullen, discontented murmurs. 

I will venture to say that there are at least, to speak 
very moderately, a hundred houses where these hum- 
ble lines will be read and discussed, where there are 
no servants except the ladies of the household. I 
will venture to say, also, that these households, many 
of them, are not inferior in the air of cultivation and 
refined elegance to many which are conducted by the 
ministration of domestics. I will venture to assert, 
furthermore, that these same ladies who live thus find 
quite as much time for reading, letter-writing, draw- 
ing, embroidery, and fancy-work as the women of 
families otherwise arranged. I am quite certain that 
they would be found on an average to be in the en- 
joyment of better health, and more of that sense of 
capability and vitality which gives one confidence in 
one's ability to look into life and meet it with cheer- 
ful courage, than three quarters of the women who 
keep servants, — and that on the whole their domes- 
tic establishment is regulated more exactly to their 
mind, their food prepared and served more to their 
taste. And yet, with all this, I will not venture to 
assert that they are satisfied with this way of living, 
and that they would not change it forthwith, if they 
could. They have a secret feeling all the while that 



132 House and Home Papers. 

they are being abused, that they are working harder 
than they ought to, and that women who Hve in their 
houses hke boarders, who have only to speak and it is 
done, are the truly enviable ones. One after another 
of their associates, as opportunity offers and means 
increase, deserts the ranks, and commits her domestic 
affairs to the hands of hired servants. Self-respect 
takes the alarm. Is it altogether genteel to live as 
we do ? To be sure, we are accustomed to it ; we 
have it all systematized and arranged ; the work of 
our own hands suits us better than any we can hire ; 
in fact, when we do hire, we are discontented and un- 
comfortable, — for who will do for us what we will do 
for ourselves ? But when we have company ! there 's 
the rub, to get out all our best things and put them 
back, — to cook the meals and wash the dishes in- 
gloriously, — and to make all appear as if we did n't 
do it, and had ser\^ants like other people. 

There, after all, is the rub. A want of hardy self- 
respect, — an unwillingness to face with dignity the 
actual facts and necessities of our situation in life, — 
this, after all, is the worst and most dangerous feature 
of the case. It is the same sort of pride which makes 
SmUax think he must hire a waiter in white gloves, 
and get up a circuitous dinner-party on English prin* 
ciples, to entertain a friend from England. Because 
the friend in England lives in such and such a style, 



The Lady who does her own Work. 133 

he must make believe for a day that he lives so too, 
when in fact it is a whirlwind in his domestic establish- 
ment equal to a removal or a fire, and threatens the 
total extinction of Mrs. Smilax. Now there are tw^o 
principles of hospitality that people are very apt to 
overlook. One is, that their guests like to be made 
at home, and treated with confidence ; and another is, 
that people are always interested in the details of a 
way of life that is new to them. The Englishman 
comes to America as weary of his old, easy, family- 
coach life as you can be of yours ; he wants to see 
something new under the sun, — something Ameri- 
can ; and forthwith we all bestir ourselves to give him 
something as near as we can fancy exactly like what 
he is already tired of So city-people come to the 
country, not to sit in the best parlor, and to see the 
nearest imitation of city-life, but to lie on the hay- 
mow, to swing in the barn, to form intimacy with the 
pigs, chickens, and ducks, and to eat baked potatoes 
exactly on the critical moment when they are done, 
from the oven of the cooking-stove, — and we remark, 
en passant^ that nobody has ever truly eaten a baked 
potato, unless he has seized it at that precise and for- 
tunate moment. 

I fimcy you now, my friends, whom I have in my 
eye. You are three happy women together. You are 
all so well that you know not how it feels to be sick. 



134 House and Home Papers, 

You aie used to early rising, and would not lie in bed, 
if you could. Long years of practice have made you 
familiar with the shortest, neatest, most expeditious 
method of doing every household office, so that really 
for the greater part of the time in your house there 
seems to a looker-on to be nothing to do. You rise 
in the morning and despatch your husband, father, 
and brothers to the farm or wood-lot ; you go sociably 
about chatting with each other, while you skim the 
milk, make the butter, turn the cheeses. The fore- 
noon is long ; it 's ten to one that all the so-called 
morning work is over, and you have leisure for an 
hour's sewing or reading before it is time to start the 
dinner preparations. By two o'clock your house-work 
is done, and you have the long afternoon for books, 
needlework, or drawing, — for perhaps there is among 
you one with a gift at her pencil. Perhaps one of you 
reads aloud while the others sew, and you manage in 
that way to keep up with a great deal of reading. I 
see on your book-shelves Prescott, Macaulay, Irving, 
besides the lighter fry of poems and novels, and, if 
I mistake not, the friendly covers of the "Atlantic." 
When you have company, you invite Mrs. Smith or 
Brown or Jones to tea ; you have no trouble ; they 
come early, with their knitting or sewing ; your particu- 
lar crony sits with you by your polished stove while you 
watch the baking of those light biscuits and tea-rusks 



The Lady who does her own Work, 135 

for which you are so famous, and Mrs. Somebody- 
else chats with your sister, who is spreading the table 
with your best china in the best room. When tea is 
over, there is plenty of volunteering to help you wash 
your pretty India teacups, and get them back into the 
cupboard. There is no special fatigue or exertion in 
all this, though you have taken down the best things 
and put them back, because you have done all without 
anxiety or effort, among those who would do precisely 
the same, if you were their visitors. 

But now comes down pretty Mrs. Simmons and her 
pretty daughter to spend a week with you, and forth- 
with you are troubled. Your youngest, Fanny, visited 
them in New York last fall, and tells you of their cook 
and chambermaid, and the servant in white gloves that 
waits on table. You say in your soul, " What shall we 
do ? they never can be contented to live as we do ; 
how shall we manage ? " And now you long for ser- 
vants. 

This is the very time that you should know that 
Mrs. Simmons is tired to death of her fine establish- 
ment, and weighed down with the task of keeping the 
peace among her servants. She is a quiet soul, dearly 
loving her ease, and hating strife ; and yet last week 
she had five quarrels to settle between her invaluable 
cook and the other members of her staff, because 
mvaluable cook, on the strength of knowing how to get 



136 House and Home Papers, 

up state-dinners and to manage all sorts of mysteries 
which her mistress knows nothing about, asserts the 
usual right of spoiled favorites to insult all her neigh- 
bors with impunity, and rule with a rod of iron over 
the whole house. Anything that is not in the least 
like her own home and ways of living will be a blessed 
relief and change to Mrs. Simmons. Your clean, quiet 
house, your delicate cookery, your cheerful morning 
tasks, if you will let her follow you about, and sit 
and talk with you while you are at your work, will 
all seem a pleasant contrast to her own life. Of 
course, if it came to the case of offering to change 
lots in life, she w^ould not do it ; but very likely she 
thinks she would, and sighs over and pities herself, 
and thinks sentimentally how fortunate you are, how 
snugly and securely you live, and wishes she were as 
untrammelled and independent as you. And she is 
more than half right ; for, with her helpless habits, 
her utter ignorance of the simplest facts concerning 
the reciprocal relations of milk, eggs, butter, saleratus, 
soda, and yeast, she is completely the victim and slave 
of the person she pretends to rule. 

Only imagine some of the frequent scenes and re- 
hearsals in her family. After many trials, she at last 
engages a seamstress who promises to prove a perfect 
treasure, — neat, dapper, nimble, skilful, and spirited. 
The very soul of Mrs. Simmons rejoices in heaven. 



The Lady who does her own Work, 137 

Illusive bliss ! The new-comer proves to be no favor- 
ite with Madam Cook, and the domestic fates evolve 
the catastrophe, as follows. First, low murmur of 
distant thunder in the kitchen ; then a day or two of 
sulky silence, in which the atmosphere seems heavy 
with an approaching storm. At last comes the climax. 
The parlor-door flies open during breakfast. Enter 
seamstress, in tears, followed by Mrs. Cook with a 
face swollen and red with wrath, who tersely intro- 
duces the subject-matter of the drama in a voice trem- 
bling with rage. 

" Would you be plased. Ma'am, to suit yerself v/ith 
another cook? Me week will be up next Tuesday, 
and I want to be going." 

" Why, Bridget, what 's the matter ? " 

" Matter enough. Ma'am ! I niver could live with 
them Cork girls in a house, nor I won't ; them as likes 
the Cork girls is welcome for all me ; but it 's not for 
the likes of me to live with them, and she been in the 
kitchen a-upsettin' of me gravies with her flat-irons 
and things." 

Here bursts in the seamstress with a whirlwind of 
denial, and the altercation wages fast and furious, and 
poor, little, delicate Mrs. Simmons stands like a kitten 
in a thunder-storm in the midst of a regular Irish row. 

Cook, of course, is sure of her victory. She knows 
that a great dinner is to come off Wednesday, and 



138 House and Home Papers. 

that her mistress has not the smallest idea how to 
manage it, and that, therefore, whatever happens, she 
must be conciliated. 

Swelling with secret indignation at the tyrant, poor 
Mrs. Simmons dismisses her seamstress with longing 
looks. She suited her mistress exactly, but she did n*t 
suit cook ! 

Now, if Mrs. Simmons had been brought up in early 
life with the experience that you have, she would be 
mistress in her own house. She would quietly say 
to Madam Cook, " If my family arrangements do not 
suit you, you can leave. I can see to the dinner 
myself" And she could do it. Her well-trained mus- 
cles would not break down under a little extra work ; 
her skill, adroitness, and perfect familiarity with every- 
thing that is to be done would enable her at once to ' 
make cooks of any bright girls of good capacity who 
might still be in her establishment ; and, above all, 
she would feel herself mistress in her own house. 
This is what would come of an experience in doing 
her own work as you do. She who can at once put 
her own trained hand to the machine in any spot 
where a hand is needed never comes to be the slave 
of a coarse, vulgar Irishwoman. 

So, also, in forming a judgment of what is to be 
expected of servants in a given time, and what ought 
to be expected of a given amount of provisions, poor 



The Lady who does her own Work, 139 

Mrs. Simmons is absolutely at sea. If even for one 
six months in her life she had been a practical cook, 
and had really had the charge of the larder, she would 
not now be haunted, as she constantly is, by an indefi- 
nite apprehension of an immense wastefulness, perhaps 
of the disappearance of provisions through secret chan- 
nels of relationship and favoritism. She certainly 
could not be made to believe in the absolute necessity 
of so many pounds of sugar, quarts of milk, and doz- 
ens of eggs, not to mention spices and wine, as are 
daily required for the accomplishment of Madam 
Cook's purposes. But though now she does suspect 
and apprehend, she cannot speak with certainty. She 
cannot say, "/ have made these things. I know 
exactly what they require. I have done this and that 
myself, and know it can be done, and done well, in a 
certain time." It is said that women who have been 
accustomed to doing their own work become hard 
mistresses. They are certainly more sure of the 
ground they stand on, — they are less open to impo- 
sition, — they can speak and act in their own houses 
more as those "having authority," and therefore are 
less afraid to exact what is justly their due, and less 
willing to endure impertinence and unfaithfulness. 
Their general error lies in expecting that any servant 
ever will do as well for them as they will do for them- 
selves, and that an untrained, undisciplined human 



140 House and Home Papers, 

Deing ever can do house-work, or any other work, with 
the neatness and perfection that a person of trained 
intelligence can. It has been remarked in our armies 
that the men of cultivation, though bred in delicate 
and refined spheres, can bear up under the hardships 
of camp-life better and longer than rough laborers. 
The reason is, that an educated mind knows how to 
use and save its body, to work it and spare it, as an 
uneducated mind cannot ; and so the college-bred 
youth brings himself safely through fatigues which 
kill the unreflective laborer. Cultivated, intelligent 
women, who are brought up to do the work of their 
own families, are labor-saving institutions. They make 
the head save the wear of the muscles. By fore- 
thought, contrivance, system, and arrangement, they 
lessen the amount to be done, and do it with less 
expense of time and strength than others. The old 
New England motto. Get your work done up in the 
forenoon^ applied to an amount of work which would 
keep a common Irish servant toiling from daylight to 
sunset. 

A lady living in one of our obscure New England 
towns, where there were no servants to be hired, at 
last by sending to a distant city succeeded in procur- 
ing a raw Irish maid-of-all-work, a creature of immense 
bone and muscle, but of heavy, una wakened brain. 
In one fortnight she established such a reign of Ghaos 



The Lady who does her own Work, 141 

and old Night in the kitchen and through the house, 
that her mistress, a deUcate woman, encumbered with 
the care of young children, began seriously to think 
that she made more work each day than she per- 
formed, and dismissed her. What was now to be 
done ? Fortunately, the daughter of a neighboring 
farmer was going to be married in six months, and 
wanted a little ready money for her trousseau. The 
lady was informed that Miss So-and-so would come 
to her, not as a servant, but as hired " help." She 
was fain to accept any help with gladness. Forthwith 
came into the family-circle a tall, well-dressed young 
person, grave, unobtrusive, self-respecting, yet not in 
the least presuming, who sat at the family-table and 
observed all its decorums with the modest self-posses- 
sion of a lady. The new-comer took a survey of the 
labors of a family of ten members, includmg four or 
five young children, and, looking, seemed at once to 
throw them into system, matured her plans, arranged 
her hours of washing, ironing, baking, cleaning, rose 
early, moved deftly, and in a single day the slatternly 
and littered kitchen assumed that neat, orderly ap- 
pearance that so often strikes one in New England 
farm-houses. The w^ork seemed to be all gone. Ev- 
erything was nicely washed, brightened, put in place, 
and stayed in place ; the floors, when cleaned, re- 
gained clean ; the work was always done, and not 



142 House and Home Papers, 

doing ; and every afternoon the young lady sat neatly 
dressed in her own apartment, either quietly writing 
letters to her betroth^, or sewing on her bridal outfit 
Such is the result of employing those who have been 
brought up to do their own work. That tall, fine-look- 
ing girl, for aught we know, may yet be mistress of a 
fine house on Fifth Avenue ; and if she is, she will, 
we fear, prove rather an exacting mistress to Irish 
Biddy and Bridget ; but she will never be threatened 
by her cook and chambermaid, after the first one or 
two have tried the experiment. 

Having written thus far on my article, I laid it 
aside till evening, when, as usual, I was saluted by 
the inquiry, " Has papa been writing anything to- 
day?" and then followed loud petitions to hear it; 
and so I read as far, reader, as you have. 

" Well, papa," said Jenny, " what are you meaning 
to make out there ? Do you really think it would be 
best for us all to try to go back to that old style of 
living you describe ? After all, you have shown only 
the dark side of an establishment with servants, and 
the bright side of the other way of living. Mamma 
does not have such trouble with her servants ; matters 
have always gone smoothly in our family ; and if we 
are not such wonderful girls as those you describe, 
yet we may make pretty good housekeepers on the 
modern system, after all.'* 



The Lady who does her own Work, 143 

" You don't know all the troubles your mamma has 
tiad in your day," said my wife. " I have often, in the 
course of my family-history, seen the day when I have 
heartily wished for the strength and ability to manage 
my household matters as my grandmother of notable 
memory managed hers. But I fear that those remark- 
able women of the olden times are like the ancient 
painted glass, — the art of making them is lost ; my 
mother was less than her mother, and I am less than 
my mother." 

"And Marianne and I come out entirely at the 
little end of the horn," said Jenny, laughing ; " yet I 
wash the breakfast-cups and dust the parlors, and have 
afcways fancied myself a notable housekeeper." 

" It is just as I told you," I said. " Human nature 
is always the same. Nobody ever is or does more 
than circumstances force him to be and do. Those 
remarkable women of old were made by circumstances. 
There were, comparatively speaking, no servants to be 
had, and so children were trained to habits of indus- 
try and mechanical adroitness from the cradle, and 
every household process was reduced to the very mini- 
mum of labor. Every step required in a process was 
counted, every movement calculated; and she who took 
ten steps, when one would do, lost her reputation for 
* faculty.' Certainly such an early drill was of use in 
developing the health and the bodily powers, as well 



144 House and Home Papers, 

as in giving precision to the practical mental faculties. 
All household economies were arranged with equal 
niceness in those thoughtful minds. A trained house- 
keeper knew just how many sticks of hickory of a 
certain size were required to heat her oven, and how 
many of each different kind of wood. She knew by 
a sort of intuition just what kinds of food would yield 
the most palatable nutriment with the least outlay of 
accessories in cooking. She knew to a minute the 
time when each article must go into and be withdrawn 
from her oven ; and if she could only lie in her cham- 
ber and direct, she could guide an intelligent child 
through the processes with mathematical certainty. It 
is impossible, however, that anything but early train- 
ing and long experience can produce these results, 
and it is earnestly to be wished that the grandmothers 
of New England had only written down their experi- 
ences for our children ; they would have been a mine 
of ma-xims and traditions, better than any other tradi- 
tions of the elders which we know of" 

*' One thing I know," said Marianne, — " and that 
is, I wish I had been brought up so, and knew all that 
I £--_ould, and had all the strength and adroitness that 
tho^e women had. I should not dread to begin house- 
keeping, as I now do. I should feel myself indepen- 
dent. I should feel that I knew how to direct my 
servants, and what it was reasonable and proper ta 



The Lady who does her own Work, 145 

expect of them ; and then, as you say, I should n't 
be dependent on ail their whims and caprices of tem- 
per. I dread those household storms, of all things." 
Silently pondering these anxieties of the young 
expectant housekeeper, I resumed my pen, and con- 
cluded my paper as follows. 

In this country, our democratic institutions have 
removed the superincumbent pressure which in the 
Old World confines the servants to a regular orbit. 
They come here feeling that this is somehow a land 
of liberty, and with very dim and confused notions of 
what liberty is. They are for the most part the raw, 
untrained Irish peasantry, and the wonder is, that, 
with all the unreasoning heats and prejudices of the 
Celtic blood, all the necessary ignorance and rawness, 
there should be the measure of comfort and success 
there is in our domestic arrangements. But, so long 
as things are so, there will be constant changes and 
interruptions in every domestic establishment, and 
constantly recurring interregnums when the mistress 
must put he*" own hand to the work, whether the hand 
be a trained or an untrained one. As matters now 
are, the young housekeeper takes life at the hardest. 
She has very little strength, — no experience to teach 
her how to save her strength. She knows nothing 
experimentally of the simplest processes necessary to 
7 



146 House and Home Paper's, 

keep her family comfortably fed and clothed ; and she 
has a way of looking at all these things which makes 
them particularly hard and distasteful to her. She 
does not escape being obliged to do house-work at 
intervals, but she does it in a weak, blundering, con- 
fused way, that makes it twice as hard and disagree- 
able as it need be. 

Now what I have to say is, that, if every young 
woman learned to do house-work and cultivated her 
practical faculties in early life, she would, in the first 
place, be much more likely to keep her servamts, and, 
in the second place, if she lost them temporarily, would 
avoid all that wear and tear of the nervous system 
which comes from constant ill-success in those de- 
partments on which family health and temper mainly 
depend. This is one of the peculiarities of our Ameri- 
can life which require a peculiar training. Why not 
face it sensibly? 

The second thing I have to say is, that our land is 
now full of motorpathic institutions to which women 
are sent at great expense to have hired operators 
stretch and exercise their inactive muscles. They lie 
for hours to have their feet twigged, their arms flexed, 
and all the different muscles of the body worked for 
them, because they are so flaccid and torpid that the 
powers of life do not go on. Would it not be quite 
as cheerful and less expensive a process, if young 



The Lady who does her own Work, 147 

girls from early life developed the muscles in sweep- 
ing, dusting, ironing, rubbing furniture, and all the 
multiplied domestic processes which our grandmoth- 
ers knew of? A woman who did all these, and diver- 
sified the intervals with spinning on the great and 
little wheel, never came to need the gymnastics of 
Dio Lewis or of the Swedish motorpathist, which 
really are a necessity now. Does it not seem poor 
economy to pay servants for letting our muscles grow 
feeble, and then to pay operators to exercise them for 
us ? I will venture to say that our grandmothers in 
a week went over every movement that any gymnast 
has invented, and went over them to some productive 
purpose too. 

Lastly, my paper will not have been in vain, if those 
ladies who have learned and practise the invaluable 
accomplishment of doing their own work will know 
their own happiness and dignity, and properly value 
their great acquisition, even though it may hai ^ been 
forced upon them by circumstances. 



VII. 

WHAT CAN BE GOT IN AMERICA. 

WHILE I was preparing my article for the "At- 
lantic," our friend Bob Stephens burst in upon 
us, in some considerable heat, with a newspaper in his 
hand. 

" Well, girls, your time is come now ! You women 
have been preaching heroism and sacrifice to us, — 
*so splendid to go forth and suffer and die for our 
country,' — and now comes the test of feminine patri- 
otism." 

" Why, what 's the matter now 1 " said Jenny, run- 
ning eagerly to look over his shoulder at the paper. 

" No more foreign goods," said he, waving it aloft, 
— "no more gold shipped to Europe for silks, laces, 
jewels, kid gloves, and what-not. Here it is, — great 
movement, headed by senators' and generals' wives, 
Mrs. General Butler, Mrs. John P. Hale, Mrs. Henry 
Wilson, and so on, a long string of them, to buy no 
more imported articles during the war." 

" But I don't see how it can be done," said Jenny. 

" Why," said I, " do you suppose that ' nothing to 
wear' is made in America?" 



What can be got in America, 149 

" But, dear Mr. Crowfield," said Miss Featherstone, 
a nice girl, who was just then one of our family-circle, 
" there is not, positively, much that is really fit to 
use or wear made in America, — is there now ? Just 
think ; how is Marianne to furnish her house here 
without French papers and English carpets ? — those 
American papers are so very ordinary, and as to 
American carpets, everybody knows their colors don't 
hold j and then, as to dress, a lady must have gloves, 
you know, — and everybody knows no such things are 
made in America as gloves." 

" I think," I said, " that I have heard of certain 
fair ladies wishing that they were men, that they 
might show with what alacrity they would sacrifice 
everything on the altar of their country : life and limb 
would be nothing ; they would glory in wounds and 
bruises, they would enjoy losing a right arm, they 
would n't mind limping about on a lame leg the rest 
of their lives, if they were John or Peter^ if only they 
might serve their dear country." 

" Yes," said Bob, " that 's female patriotism ! Girls 
are always ready to jump off from precipices, or throw 
themselves into abysses, but as to wearing an unfash- 
ionable hat or thread gloves, that they can't do, — 
not even for their dear country. No matter whether 
there 's any money left to pay for the war or not, the 
dear souls must have twenty yard[s qf silk in a dres% 
— it 's the fashion, you know." 



150 House and Home Papers, 

" Now, is n't he loo bad ? " said Marianne. "As if 
we 'd ever been asked to make these sacrifices and 
refused ! I think I have seen women ready to give 
up dress and fasliion and everything else, for a good 
cause." 

" For that matter," said I, " the history of all wars 
has shown women ready to sacrifice what is most 
intimately feminine in times of peril to their country. 
The women of Carthage not only gave up their jewels 
in the siege of their city, but, in the last extremity, 
cut off their hair for bow-strings. The women of 
Hungary and Poland, in their country's need, sold 
their jewels and plate and wore ornaments of iron and 
lead. In the time of our own Revolution, our women 
dressed in plain homespun and drank herb-tea, — and 
certainly nothing is more feminine than a cup of tea. 
And in this very struggle, the women of the Southern 
States have cut up their carpets for blankets, have 
borne the most humiliating retrenchments and pri- 
vations of all kinds without a murmur. So let us 
exonerate the female sex of want of patriotism, at any 
rate." 

" Certainly," said my wife ; " and if our Northern 
women have not retrenched and made sacrifices, it 
has been because it has not been impressed on them 
that there is any particular call for it. Everything has 
seemed to be so prosperous and plentiful in the North- 



What can be got in America, 151 

ern States, money has been so abundant and easy to 
come by, that it has really been difficult to realize that 
a dreadful and destructive war was raging. Only occa 
sionally, after a great battle, when the lists of the 
killed and wounded have been sent through the coun- 
try, have we felt that we were making a sacrifice. The 
women who have spent such sums for laces and jewels 
and silks have not had it set clearly before them why 
they should not do so. The money has been placed 
freely in their hands, and the temptation before their 
eyes." 

" Yes," said Jenny, " I am quite sure that there are 
hundreds who have been buying foreign goods, who 
would not do it, if they could see any connection 
between their not doing it and the salvation of the 
country ; but when I go to buy a pair of gloves, I nat- 
urally want the best pair I can find, the pair that will 
last the longest and look the best, and these always 
happen to be French gloves." 

" Then," said Miss Featherstone, " I never could 
clearly see why people should confine their patronage 
and encouragement to works of their own country. 
I 'm sure the poor manufacturers of England have 
shown the very noblest spirit with relation to our 
cause, and so have the silk-weavers and artisans of 
France, — at least, so I have heard \ why should we 
not give them a fair share of encouragement, particu- 



152 House and Home Papers. 

larly when they make things that we are not in circum^ 
stances to make, have not the means to make ? " 

" Those are certainly sensible questions," I replied, 
" and ought to meet a fair answer, and I should say, 
that, were our country in a fair ordinary state of pros- 
perity, there would be no reason why our wealth should 
not flow out for the encouragement of well-directed 
industry in any part of the world ; from this point of 
view we might look on the whole world as our coun- 
try, and cheerfully assist in developing its wealth and 
resources. But our country is now in the situation of 
a private family whose means are absorbed by an ex- 
pensive sickness, involving the life of its head ; just 
now it is all we can do to keep the family together, 
all our means are swallowed up by our own domestic 
wants, we have nothing to give for the encouragement 
of other families, we must exist ourselves, we must 
^^t through this crisis and hold our own, and that we 
may do it all the family expenses must be kept within 
ourselves as far as possible. If we drain off all the 
gold of the country to send to Europe to encourage 
her worthy artisans, we produce high prices and dis- 
tress among equally worthy ones at home, and we 
lessen the amount of our resources for maintaining 
the great struggle for national existence. The same 
amount of money which we pay for foreign luxuries, 
if passed into the hands of our own manufacturers 



What can be got in America, 153 

and producers, becomes available for the increasing 
expenses of the war." 

" But, papa," said Jenny, " I understood that a 
great part of our Governmental income was derived 
from the duties on foreign goods, and so I inferred 
that the more foreign goods were imported the better 
it would be." 

"Well, suppose," said I, "that for every hundred 
thousand dollars we send out of the country we pay 
tlie Government ten thousand ; that is about what our 
gain as a nation would be ; — we send our gold abroad 
in a great stream, and give our Government a little 
driblet." 

" Well, but," said Miss Featherstone, " what can be 
got in America ? Hardly anything, I believe, except 
common calicoes." 

" Begging your pardon, my dear lady," said I, 
" there is where you and multitudes of others are 
greatly mistaken. Your partiality for foreign things 
has kept you ignorant of what you have at home. 
Now I am not blaming the love of foreign things j it 
is not peculiar to us Americans ; all nations have it. 
It is a part of the poetry of our nature to love what 
comes from afar, and reminds us of lands distant and 
different from our own. The English belles seek after 
French laces ; the French beauty enumerates English 
lacey among her rarities ; and the French dandy piques 



154 House and Home Papers. 

himself upon an English tailor. We Americans are 
great travellers, and few people travel, 1 fancy, with 
more real enjoyment than we ; our domestic establish- 
ments, as compared with those of the Old World, are 
less cumbrous and stately, and so our money is com- 
monly in hand as pocket-money, to be spent freely 
and gayly in our tours abroad. 

" We have such bright and pleasant times in every 
country that we conceive a kindliness for its belong- 
ings. To send to Paris for our dresses and our shoes 
and our gloves may not be a mere bit of foppery, but 
a reminder of the bright, pleasant hours we have spent 
in that city of Boulevards and fountains. Hence it 
comes, in a way not very blamable, that many people 
have been so engrossed with what can be got from 
abroad that they have neglected to inquire what can 
be found at home ; they have supposed, of course, that 
to get a decent watch they must send to Geneva or to 
London, — that to get thoroughly good carpets they 
must have the English manufacture, — that a really 
tasteful wall-paper could be found only in Paris,-— 
and that flannels and broadcloths could come only 
from France, Great Britain, or Germany." 

'' Well, is n't it so ] " said Miss Featherstone. " I 
certainly have always thought so j I never heard of 
American watches, I 'm sure." 

" Then," said I, " I 'm sure you can't have read an 



What can be got in America. 155 

article that you should have read on the Waltham 
watches, written by our friend George W. Curtb; in 
the " Atlantic " for January of last year. I must refer 
you to that to learn that we make in America watches 
superior to those of Switzerland or England, bringing 
into the service machinery and modes of workman- 
ship unequalled for delicacy and precision ; as I said 
before, you must get the article and read it, and if 
some sunny day you could make a trip to Waltham, 
and see the establishment, it would greatly assist your 
comprehension." 

" Then, as to men's clothing," said Bob, " I know 
to my entire satisfaction that many of the most popu- 
lar cloths for men's wear are actually American fabrics 
baptized with French and English names to make 
them sell." 

" Which shows," said I, " the use of a general com- 
munity movement to employ American goods. It will 
change the fashion. The demand will create the sup- 
ply. When the leaders of fashion are inquiring for 
American instead of French and English fabrics, they 
will be surprised to find what nice American articles 
there are. The work of our own hands will no more 
be forced to skulk into the market under French and 
English names, and we shall see, what is really true, 
that an American gentleman need not look beyond 
his own country for a wardrobe befitting him I am 



X56 House and Home Papers, 

positive that we need not seek broadcloth or other 
woollen goods from foreign lands, — that better hats 
are made in America than in Em-ope, and better boots 
and shoes ; and I should be glad to send an American 
gentleman to the World's Fair dressed from top to toe 
in American manufactures, with an American watch 
in his pocket, and see if he would suffer in comparison 
with the gentlemen cf any other country." 

"Then, as to house-furnishing," began my wife, 
"American carpets are getting to be every way equal 
to the English." 

" Yes," said I, " and what is more, the Brussels 
carpets of England are woven on looms invented by 
an American, and bought of him. Our countryman, 
Bigelow, went to England to study carpet-weaving in 
the English looms, — supposing that all arts were gen-, 
erously open for the instruction of learners. He v/as 
denied the opportunity of studying the machinery and 
watching the processes by a short-sighted jealousy. 
He immediately sat down with a yard of carpeting, 
and, patiently unravelling it, thread by thread, com- 
bined and calculated till he invented the machinery 
on which the best carpets of the Old and New World 
are woven. No pains which such ingenuity and en- 
ergy can render effective are spared to make our fabrics 
equal those of the British market, and we need only 
to be disabused of the old prejudice, and to keep up 



What can be got in America, 157 

with the movement of our own country, and find out 
our own resources. The fact is, every year improves 
our fabrics. Our mechanics, our manufacturers, are 
working with an energy, a zeal, and a skill that carry 
things forward faster than anybody dreams of; and 
nobody can predicate the character of American arti- 
cles, in any department, now, by their character even 
five years ago." 

" Well, as to wall-papers," said Miss Featherstone, 
" there you must confess the French are and must be 
unequalled." 

" I do not confess any such thing," said I, hardily. 
" I grant you that in that department of paper-hangings 
which exhibits floral decoration the French designs 
and execution are and must be for some time to come 
far ahead of all the world, — their drawing of flowers, 
vines, and foliage has the accuracy of botanical studies 
and the grace of finished works of art, and we cannot 
as yet pretend in America to do anything equal to it. 
But for satin finish, and for a variety of exquisite tints 
of plain colors, American papers equal any in the 
world ; our gilt papers even surpass in the heaviness 
and polish of the gilding those of foreign countries ; 
and we have also gorgeous velvets. All I have to say 
is, let people who are furnishing houses inquire for 
articles of American manufacture, and they will be 
surprised at what they will see. We need go no 



158 House and Home Papers, 

fait her than our Cambridge glass-works to see that 
the most dainty devices of cut-glass, crystal, ground 
and engraved glass of every color and pattern, may be 
had of American workmanship, every way equal to 
the best European make, and for half the price. And 
American painting on china is so well executed both 
in Boston and New York, that deficiencies in the finest 
French or English sets can be made up in a style not 
distinguishable from the original, as one may easily 
see by calling on our worthy next neighbor, Briggs, who 
holds the opposite comer to our "Atlantic Monthly." 
No porcelain, it is true, is yet made in America, 
these decorative arts being exercised on articles im- 
ported from Europe. Our tables must, therefore, per 
force, be largely indebted to foreign lands for years 
to come. Exclusive of this item, however, I believe 
it would require very little self-denial to paper, carpet, 
and furnish a house entirely from the manufactures 
of America. I cannot help saying one word here in 
favor of the cabinet-makers of Boston. There is so 
much severity of taste, such a style and manner aoout 
the best made Boston furniture, as raises it really quite 
into the region of the fine arts. Our artisans have 
Btudied foreign models with judicious eyes, and so 
transferred to our country the spirit of what is best 
worth imitating, that one has no need to import fur- 
niture from Europe." 



What ca7t be got in America. 159 

"Well," said Miss Featherstone, "there is one 
point you cannot make out, — gloves ; certainly the 
French have the monopoly of that article." 

" I am not going to ruin my cause by asserting too 
much," said I. " I have n't been with nicely dressed 
women so many years not to speak with proper respect 
of Alexander's gloves, — and I confess, honestly, that 
to forego them must be a fair, square sacrifice to 
patriotism. But then, on the other hand, it is nev- 
ertheless true that gloves have long been made in 
America and surreptitiously brought into market as 
French. I have lately heard that very nice kid gloves 
are made at Watertown and in Philadelphia. I have 
only heard of them, and not seen. A loud demand 
might bring forth an unexpected supply from these 
and other sources. If the women of America were 
bent on having gloves made in their own country, how 
long would it be before apparatus and factories would 
spring into being ? Look at the hoop-skirt factories, 
— women wanted hoop-skirts, — would have them or 
die, — and forthwith factories arose, and hoop-skirts 
became as the dust of the earth for abundance." 

" Yes," said Miss Featherstone, " and, to say the 
truth, the American hoop-skirts are the only ones fit 
to wear. When we were living on the Champs Ely- 
s^es, I remember we searched high and low for some- 
thing like them, and finally had to send home to 
America for some." 



l6o House and Home Papers, 

"Well," said I, "that shows what I said. Let 
there be only a hearty call for an article, and it will 
come. These spirits of the vasty deep are not so 
very far off, after all, as we may imagine, and women's 
unions and leagues will lead to inquiries and demands 
which will as infallibly bring supplies as a vacuum wil 
create a draught of air." 

" But, at least, there are no ribbons made in Amer 
ica," said Miss Featherstone. 

" Pardon, my lady, there is a ribbon-factory now li> 
operation in Boston, and ribbons of every color are 
made in New York j there is also in the vicinity of 
Boston a factory which makes Roman scarfs. This 
shows that the faculty of weaving ribbons is not want- 
ing to us Americans, and a zealous patronage wouW 
increase the supply. 

" Then, as for a thousand and one little feminine 
needs, I believe our manufacturers can supply them. 
The Portsmouth Steam Company makes white spool- 
cotton equal to any in England, and colored spool- 
cotton, of every shade and variety, such as is not made 
either in England or France. Pins are well made in 
America ; so are hooks and eyes, and a variety of 
buttons. Straw bonnets of American manufacture are 
also extensively in market, and quite as pretty ones as 
the double-priced ones which are imported. 

"As to silks and satins, I am not going to pretend 



What can be got in America. i6l 

that they are to be found here. It is true, there are 
silk manufactorieSj like that of the Cheneys in Con- 
necticut, where very pretty foulard dress-silks are 
made, together with sewing-silk enough to supply a 
large demand. Enough has been done to show that 
silks might be made in America ; but at present, as 
compared with Europe, we claim neither silks nor 
thread laces among our manufactures. 

" But what then ? These are not necessaries of life. 
Ladies can be ver}^ tastefully dressed in other fabrics 
besides silks. There are many pretty American dress- 
goods which the leaders of fashion might make fash- 
ionable ; and certainly no leader of fashion could wish 
to dress for a nobler object than to aid her country in 
deadly peril. 

" It is not a life-pledge, not a total abstinence, that 
is asked, — only a temporary expedient to meet a 
stringent crisis. We only ask a preference for Ameri- 
can goods where they can be found. Surely, women 
whose exertions in Sanitary Fairs have created an era 
in the history of the world will not shrink from so 
small a sacrifice for so obvious a good. 

" Here is something in which every individual wo- 
man can help. Every woman who goes into a shop 
and asks for American goods renders an appreciable 
aid to our cause. She expresses her opinion and her 
patriotism \ and her voice forms a part of that demand 



1 62 House and Home Papers. 

which shall arouse and develop. the resources of her 
country. We shall learn to know our own country. 
We shall learn to respect our own powers, — and 
every branch of useful labor will spring and flourish 
under our well-directed efforts. We shall come out 
of our great contest, not bedraggled, ragged, and 
poverty-stricken, but developed, instructed, and rich. 
Then will we gladly join with other nations in the 
free interchange of manufactures, and gratify our eye 
and taste with what is foreign, while we can in turn 
send abroad our own productions in equal ratio." 

" Upon my word," said Miss Featherstone, " I 
should think it was the Fourth of July, — but I yield 
the point. I am convinced ; and henceforth you will 
see me among the most stringent of the leaguers." 

" Right ! " said I. 

And, fair lady-reader, let me hope you will say the 
same. You can do something for your country, — it 
lies right in your hand. Go to the shops, determined 
on supplying your family and yourself with American 
goods. Insist on having them ; raise the question of 
origin over every article shown to you. In the Revo- 
lutionary times, some of the leading matrons of New 
England gave parties where the ladies were dressed in 
homespun and drank sage-tea. Fashion makes al'. 
things beautiful, and you, my charming and accom* 
plished friend, can create beauty by creating fashion. 



What can be got in America. 163 

What makes the beauty of half the Cashmere shawls ? 
Not anything in the shawls themselves, for they often 
look coarse and dingy and barbarous. It is the asso- 
ciation with style and fashion. Fair lady, give style 
and fashion to the products of your own country, — 
resolve that the money in your hand shall go to your 
brave brothers, to your co-Americans, now straining 
every nerve to uphold the nation, and cause it to 
stand high in the earth. What are you without your 
country? As Americans you can hope for no rank 
but the rank of your native land, no badge of nobility 
but her beautiful stars. It rests with this conflict to 
decide whether those stars shall be badges of nobil- 
ity to you and your children in all lands. Women of 
America, your country expects every woman to do her 
duty! 



VIII. 

ECONOMY. 

^ 'T^HE fact is," said Jenny, as she twirled a little 
-■- hat on her hand, which she had been making 
over, with nobody knows what of bows and pompons, 
and other matters for which the women have curious 
names, — " the fact is, American women and girls 
must learn to economize ; it is n't merely restricting 
one's self to American goods, it is general economy, 
that is required. Now here 's this hat, — costs me 
only three dollars, all told ; and Sophie Page bought 
an English one this morning at Madame Meyer's for 
which she gave fifteen. And I really don't think hers 
has more of an air than mine. I made this over, you 
see, with things I had in the house, bought nothing 
but the ribbon, and paid for altering and pressing, 
and there you see what a stylish hat I have ! " 

" Lovely ! admirable ! " said Miss Featherstone. 
" Upon my word, Jej[iny, you ought to marry a poor 
parson ; you would be quite thrown away upon a rich 
man." 

" Let me see," said I. " I want to admire intelli- 



Economy, 165 

gently. That is n't the hat you were wearing yester- 
day?" 

" O no, papa ! This is just done. The one I v. ore 
yesterday was my waterfall-hat, with the green feather \ 
this, you see, is an oriole." 

"Awhat?" 

"An oriole. Papa, how can you expect to learn 
about these things ? " 

"And that plain little black one, with the stiff crop 
of scarlet feathers sticking straight up ? " 

"That 's my jockey, papa, with a plume en mili- 
taire^ 

"And did the waterfall and the jockey cost any- 
thing ? " 

"They were very, very cheap, papa, all things 
considered. Miss Featherstone will remember that 
the waterfall was a great bargain, and I had the feather 
from last year ; and as to the jockey, that was made 
out of my last year's white one, dyed over. You know, 
papa, I always take care of my things, and they last 
from year to year." 

" I do assure you, Mr. Crowfield," said Miss Feath- 
erstone, " I never saw such little economists as your 
daughters ; it is perfectly wonderful what they contrive 
to dress on. How they manage to do it I 'm sure I 
can't see. I never could, I 'm convinced." 

" Yes," said Jenny, " I' ve bought but just one new 



1 66 House and Home Papers, 

hat I onty wish you could sit in church where we 
do, and see those Miss Fielders. Marianne and I 
have counted six new hats apiece of those girls', — 
new^ you know, just out of the milliner's shop ; and 
last Sunday they came out in such lovely puffed tulle 
bonnets ! Were n't they lovely, Marianne ? And next 
Sunday, I don't doubt, there '11 be something else." 

" Yes," said Miss Featherstone, — " their father, 
they say, has made a million dollars lately on Govern- 
ment contracts." 

'* For my part," said Jenny, " I think such extrava- 
gance, at such a time as this, is shameful." 

" Do you know," said I, " that I 'm quite sure the 
Misses Fielder think they are practising rigorous econ- 
omy ? " 

" Papa ! Now there you are with your paradoxes I 
How can you say so ? " 

" I should n't be afraid to bet a pair of gloves, 
now," said I, " that Miss Fielder thinks herself half 
ready for translation, because she has bought only six 
new hats and a tulle bonnet so far in the season. If 
it were not for her dear bleeding country, she would 
liave had thirty-six, like the Misses Sibthorpe. If we 
were admitted to the secret councils of the Fielders, 
doubtless we should perceive what temptations they 
daily resist ; how perfectly rubbishy and dreadful they 
suflfer themselves to be, because they feel it important 



Economy^ 167 

now, in this crisis, to practise economy ; how they 
abuse the Sibthorpes, who have a new hat every time 
they drive out, and never think of wearing one more 
than two or three times ; how virtuous and self-deny- 
ing they feel, when they think of the puffed tulle, for 
which they only gave eighteen dollars, when Madame 
Caradori showed them those lovely ones, like the 
Misses Sibthorpe's, for forty-five ; and how they go 
home descanting on virgin simplicity, and resolving 
that they will not allow themselves to be swept into 
the vortex of extravagance, whatever other people 
may do." 

" Do you know," said Miss Featherstone, " I be- 
lieve your papa is right ? I was calling on the oldest 
Miss Fielder the other day, and she told me that she 
positively felt ashamed to go looking as she did, but 
that she really did feel the necessity of economy. 
* Perhaps we might afford to spend more than some 
others,' she said ; * but it 's so much better to give the 
money to the Sanitary Commission ! ' " 

" Furthermore," said I, " I am going to put forth 
another paradox, and say that very likely there are 
some people looking on my girls, and commenting 
on them for extravagance in having three hats, even 
though made over, and contrived from last year's 
stock." 

"They can't know anything about it, then," said 



1 68 House and Home Papers, 

Jenny, decisively ; " for, certainly, nobody can be 
decent, and invest less in millinery than Marianne 
and I do.'' 

" When I was a young lady," said my wife, " a well- 
dressed girl got her a new bonnet in the spring, and 
another in the fall ; — that was the extent of her pur- 
chases in this line. A second-best bonnet, left of last 
year, did duty to relieve and preserve the best one. 
My father was accounted well-to-do, but I had no 
more, and wanted no more. I also bought myself, 
every spring, two pair of gloves, a dark and a light 
pair, and wore them through the summer, and another 
two through the winter ; one or two pair of white kids, 
carefully cleaned, carried me through all my parties. 
Hats had not been heard of, and the great necessity 
which requires two or three new ones every spring 
and fall had not arisen. Yet I was reckoned a well- 
appearing girl, who dressed liberally. Now, a young 
lady who has a waterfall-hat, an oriole-hat, and a 
jockey, must still be troubled wdth anxious cares for 
her spring and fall and summer and winter bonnets, 
— all the variety will not take the place of them. 
Gloves are bought by the dozen ; and as to dresses, 
there seems to be no limit to the quantity of mate- 
rial and trimming that may be expended upon them. 
When I was a young lady, seventy-five dollars a year 
was considered by careful parents a liberal allowance 



Economy. 169 

for a daughter's wardrobe. I had a hundred, and was 
reckoned rich ; and I sometimes used a part to make 
op the deficiencies in the allowance of Sarah Evans, 
my particular friend, whose father gave her only fifty. 
We all thought that a very scant allowance ; yet she 
generally made a very pretty and genteel appearance, 
with the help of occasional presents from friends." 

" How could a girl dress for fifty dollars ? " said 
Marianne. 

" She could get a white muslin and a white cam- 
bric, which, with different sortings of ribbons, served 
her for all dress-occasions. A silk, in those days, 
took only ten yards in the making, and one dark silk 
was considered a reasonable allowance to a lady's 
wardrobe. Once made, it stood for something, — ■ 
always worn carefully, it lasted for years. One or two 
calico morning-dresses, and a merino for winter wear, 
completed the list. Then, as to collars, capes, cuffs, 
etc., we all did our own embroidering, and very pretty 
things we v/ore, too. Girls looked as prettily then as 
they do now, when four or five hundred dollars a year 
is insufficient to clothe them." 

^^ But, mamma, you know our allowance is n't any- 
thing like that, — it is quite a slender one, though not 
so small as yours was," said Marianne. " Don't you 
think the customs of society make a difference ? Do 
you think, as things are, we could go back and dress 

for the sum you did?" 
8 



170 House and Home Papers, 

"You cannot," said my wife, "without a greater 
sacrifice of feeling than I wish to impose on you. 
Still, though I don't see how to help it, I cannot but 
think that the requirements of fashion are becoming 
needlessly extravagant, particularly in regard to the 
dress of women. It seems to me, it is making the 
support of families so burdensome that young men 
are discouraged from marriage. A young man, in a 
moderately good business, might cheerfully undertake 
the world with a wife who could make herself pretty 
and attractive for seventy-five dollars a year, when he 
might sigh in vain for one who positively could not 
get through, and be decent, on four hundred. Women, 
too, are getting to be so attached to the trappings and 
accessories of life, that they cannot think of marriage 
without an amount of fortune which few young men 
possess." 

"You are talking in very low numbers about the 
dress of women," said Miss Featherstone. " I do 
assure you that it is the easiest thing in the world for 
a girl to make away with a thousand dollars a year, 
and not have so much to show for it either as Mari- 
anne and Jenny." 

" To be sure," said I. " Only establish certain for- 
mulas of expectation, and it is the easiest thing in the 
world. For instance, in your mother's day girls talked 
of a pair of gloves, — now they talk of a pack ; then 



Economy, 171 

it was a bonnet summer and winter, — now it is a bon- 
net spring, summer, autumn, and winter, and hats like 
monthly roses, — a new blossom every few weeks.'* 

"And then," said my wife, " every device of the 
toilet is immediately taken up and varied and im- 
proved on. so as to impose an almost monthly neces- 
sity for novelty. The jackets of May are outshone by 
the jackets of June ; the buttons of June are anti- 
quated in July ; the trimmings of July are passees by 
September ; side-combs, back-combs, puffs, rats, and 
all sorts of such matters, are in a distracted race of 
improvement ; every article of feminine toilet is on 
the move towards perfection. It seems to me that an 
infinity of money must be spent in these trifles, by 
those who make the least pretension to keep in the 
fashion." 

"Well, papa," said Jenny, "after all, it's just the 
way things always have been since the world began. 
You know the Bible says, ' Can a maid forget her 
ornaments?' It's clear she can't. You see, it's a 
law of Nature ; and you remember all that long chap- 
ter in the Bible that we had read in church last Sun- 
day, about the curls and veils and tinkling ornaments 
and crimping-pins, and all that of those wicked daugh- 
ters of Zion in old times. Women always have been 
too much given to dress, and they always will be." 

"The thing is," said Marianne, "how can any 



1^2 House and Home Papers. 

wcman, I, for example, knov/ what is too much ot 
too little? In mamma's day, it seems, a girl could 
keep her place in society, by hard economy, and 
spend only fifty dollars a year on her dress. Mam- 
ma found a hundred dollars ample. I have more 
than that, and find myself quite straitened to keep 
myself looking well. I don't want to live for dress, 
to give all my time and thoughts to it ; I don't wish 
to be extravagant ; and yet I wish to be lady-like ; it 
annoys and makes me unhappy not to be fresh and 
neat and nice ; shabbiness and seediness are my aver- 
sion. I don't see where the feult is. Can one indi- 
\ddual resist the whole current of society.'^ It cer- 
tainly is not strictly necessary for us girls to have half 
the things we do. We might, I suppose, live without 
many of them, and, as mamma says, look just as well, 
because girls did so before these things were invented. 
Now, I confess, I flatter myself, generally, that I am 
a pattern of good management and economy, be- 
cause I get so much less than other girls I associate 
with. I wish you could see Miss Thome's fall dresses 
that she showed me last year when she was visiting 
here. She had six gowns, and no one of them could 
have cost less than seventy or eighty dollars, and 
some of them must have been even more expensive ; 
and yet I don't doubt that this fall she will feel that 
she must have just as many more. She runs through 



Economy, i73 

and wears out these expensive things, with all their 
velvet and thread lace, just as I wear my commonest 
ones ; and at the end ol the season they are really 
gone, — spotted, stained, frayed, the lace all pulled 
to pieces, — nothing left to save or make over. I 
feel as if Jenny and I were patterns of economy, 
when I see such things. I really don't know what 
economy is. What is it ? " 

" There is the same difficulty in my housekeeping," 
said my wife. "I think I am an economist. I mean 
to be one. All our expenses are on a modest scale, 
and yet I can see much that really is not strictly 
necessary ; but if I compare myself with some of my 
neighbors, I feel as if I were hardly respectable. 
There is no subject on which all the world are cen- 
suring one another so much as this. Hardly any one 
but thinks her neighbors extravagant in some one or 
more particulars, and takes for granted that she her- 
self is an economist." 

" I '11 venture to say," said I, " that there is n't a 
woman of my acquaintance that does not think she 
is an economist." 

" Papa is turned against us women, like all the rest 
of them," said Jenny. " I wonder if it is n't just so 
with the men?" 

" Yes," said Marianne, " it 's the fashion to talk as 
if all the extravagance of the country was perpetrated 



1/4 House and Home Papers, 

by women. For my part, I think young men are just 
as extravagant. Look at the sums they spend for 
cigars and meerschaums, — an expense which hasn't 
even the pretence of usefulness in any way ; it 's a 
purely selfish, nonsensical indulgence. When a girl 
spends money in making herself look pretty, she con- 
tributes something to the agreeableness of societ}^ ; 
but a man's cigars and pipes are neither ornamental 
nor useful." 

" Then look at their dress," said Jenny ; " they are 
to the full as fussy and particular about it as girls ; 
they have as many fine, invisible points of fashion, 
and their fashions change quite as often; and they 
have just as many knick-knacks, with their studs and 
their sleeve-buttons and waistcoat-buttons, their scarfs 
and scarf-pins, their watch-chains and seals and seal- 
rings, and nobody knows what Then they often 
waste and throw away more than women, because 
they are not good judges of material, nor saving in 
what they buy, and have no knowledge of how things 
should be cared for, altered, or mended. If their cap 
is a little too tight, they cut the lining with a pen- 
knife, or slit holes in a new shirt-collar, because it 
does not exactly fit to their mind. For my part, I 
think men are naturally twice as wasteful as women. 
A pretty thing, to be sure, to have all the waste of the 
country laid to us ! " 



Economy. 175 

** You are right, child," said I ; " women are by 
nature, as compared with men, the care-taking and 
saving part of creation, — the authors and conserva- 
tors of economy. As a general rule, man earns and 
woman saves and applies. The wastefulness of wo- 
man is commonly the fault of man." 

" I don't see into that," said Bob Stephens. 

'^ In this way. Economy is the science of propor- 
tion. Whether a particular purchase is extravagant 
depends mainly on the income it is taken from. Sup- 
pose a woman has a hundred and fifty a year for her 
dress, and givee fifty dollars for a bonnet ; she gives 
a third of her income ; — it is a horrible extravagance, 
while for the woman whose income is ten thousand it 
may be no extravagance at all. The poor clergy- 
man's wife, when she gives five dollars for a bonnet, 
may be giving as much, in proportion to her income, 
as the woman who gives fifty. Now the difficulty 
with the greater part of women is, that the men who 
make the money and hold it give them no kind of 
standard by which to measure their expenses. Most 
women and girls are in this matter entirely at sea, 
without chart or compass. They don't know in the 
least what they have to spend. Husbands and fa- 
thers often pride themselves about not saying a word 
on business-matters to their wives and daughters. 
They don't wish them to understand them, or to 



176 House and Home Papers, 

inquire into them, or to make remarks or suggestions 
concerning them. ' I w?nt you to have everything 
that is suitable and proper/ says Jones to his wife, 
^but don't be extravagant/ 

" ^ But, my dear,' says Mrs. Jones, ' what is suitable 
and proper depends very much on our means ; if you 
could allow me any specific sum for dress and house- 
keeping, I could tell better/ 

" * Nonsense, Susan ! I can't do that, — it 's too 
much trouble. Get what you need, and avoid foolish 
extravagances ; that 's all I ask.* 

"By and by Mrs. Jones's bills are sent in, in an 
evil hour, when Jones has heavy notes to meet, and 
then comes a domestic storm. 

" ^ I shall just be ruined. Madam, if that *s the way 
you are going on. I can't afford to dress you and the 
girls in the style you have set up ; — look at this mil- 
liner's bill ! ' 

" ' I assure you,' says Mrs. Jones, ^ we have n't got 
any more than the Stebbinses, — nor so much.' 

" ^ Don't you know that the Stebbinses are worth 
five times as much as ever I was V 

" No, Mrs. Jones did not know it ; - — how should 
she, when her husband makes it a rule never to speak 
of his business to her, and she has not the remotest 
i iea of his income ? 

"Thus multitudes of good conscientious women 



Economy, 177 

and girls are extravagant from pure ignorance. The 
male provider idlows bills to be run up in his name, 
and they have no earthly means of judging whether 
they are spending too much or too little, except the 
semi-annual hurricane which attends the coming in 
of these bills. 

" The first essential in the practice of economy is a 
knowledge of one's income, and the man who refuses 
to accord to his wife and children this information has 
never any right to accuse them of extravagance, be- 
cause he himself deprives them of that standard of 
comparison which is an indispensable requisite in 
economy. As early as possible in the education of 
children they should pass from that state of irrespon- 
sible waiting to be provided for by parents, and be 
trusted with the spending of some fixed allowance, 
that they may learn prices and values, and have some 
notion of what money is actually worth and what it 
will bring. The simple fact of the possession of a 
fixed and definite income often suddenly transforms 
a giddy, extravagant girl into a care-taking, prudent 
little woman. Her allowance is her own ; she begins 
to plan upon it, — to add, subtract, multiply, divide, 
and do numberless sums in her little head. She no 
longer buys everything she fancies ; she deliberates, 
weighs, compares. And new there is room for self- 
denial and generosity to come in. She can do with- 
8* 



178 House and Home Papers. 

out this article ; she can furbish up some older pos- 
session to do duty a little longer, and give this money 
to some friend poorer than she ; and ten to one the 
girl whose bills last year were four or five hundred 
finds herself bringing through this year creditably on 
a hundred and fifty. To be sure, she goes without 
numerous things which she used to have. From the 
stand-point of a fixed income she sees that these are 
impossible, and no more wants them than the green 
cheese of the moon. She learns to make her own 
taste and skill take the place of expensive purchases. 
She refits her hats and bonnets, retrims her dresses, 
and in a thousand busy, earnest, happy little ways, sets 
herself to make the most of her small income. 

" So the woman who has her definite allowance for 
housekeeping finds at once a hundred questions set 
at rest. Before, it was not clear to her why she should 
not ' go and do likewise ' in relation to every purchase 
made by her next neighbor. Now, there is a clear 
logic of proportion. Certain things are evidently not 
to be thought of, though next neighbors do have 
them ; and we must resign ourselves to find some 
other way of living." 

" My dear," said my wife, " I think there is a pe- 
culiar temptation in a life organized as ours is in 
America. There are here no settled classes, with 
similar ratios of income. Mixed together in the 



Economy. 179 

same society, going to the same parties, and blended 
in daily neighborly intercourse, are families of the 
most opposite extremes in point of fortune. In Eng- 
land there is a very well understood expression, that 
people should not dress or live above their station ; 
in America none will admit that they have any par- 
ticular station, or that they can live above it. The 
principle of democratic equality unites in society peo- 
ple of the most diverse positions and means. 

" Here, for instance, is a family like Dr. Selden's, 
an old and highly respected one, with an income of 
only two or three thousand, — yet they are people 
universally sought for in society, and mingle in all the 
intercourse of life with merchant-millionnaires whose 
incomes are from ten to thirty thousand. Their sons 
and daughters go to the same schools, the same par- 
ties, and are thus constantly meeting upon terms of 
social equality. 

" Now it seems to me that our danger does not lie 
in the great and evident expenses of our richer friends. 
We do not expect to have pineries, graperies, equi- 
pages, horses, diamonds, — we say openly and of 
course that we do not. Still, our expenses are con- 
stantly increased by the proximity of these things, 
unless we understand ourselves better than most peo- 
ple do. We don't of course, expect to get a fifteen- 
hundred-dollar Cashmere, like Mrs. So-and-so, but we 



i8o House and Home Papers, 

begin to look at hundred-dollar shawls and nibble 
about the hook. We don't expect sets of diamonds, 
but a diamond ring, a pair of solitaire diamond ear- 
rings, begins to be speculated about among the young 
people as among possibilities. We don't expect to 
carpet our house with Axminster and hang our win- 
dows with damask, but at least we must have Brus- 
sels and brocatelle, — it would not do not to. And 
so we go on getting hundreds of things that we 
don't need, that have no real value except that they 
soothe our self-love, — and for these inferior articles 
we pay a higher proportion of our income than our 
rich neighbor does for his better ones. Nothing is 
uglier than low-priced Cashmere shawls ; and yet a 
young man just entering business will spend an eighth 
of a year's income to put one on his wife, and when 
he has put it there it only serves as a constant source 
of disquiet, — for now that the door is opened, and 
Cashmere shawls are possible, she is consumed with 
envy at the superior ones constantly sported around 
her. So also with point-lace, velvet dresses, and hun- 
dreds of things of that sort, which belong to a certain 
rate of income, and are absurd below it.'' 

" And yet, mamma, I heard Aunt Easygo say that 
velvet, point-lace, and Cashmere were the cheapest 
finery that could be bought, because they lasted a 
lifetime." 



Economy. * i8l 

" Aunt Easygo speaks from an income of ten thou- 
sand a year \ they may be cheap for her rate of Hving, 
— but for us, for example, by no magic of numbers 
can it be made to appear that it is cheaper to have 
the greatest bargain in the world in Cashmere, lace, 
and diamonds, than not to have them at all. I never 
had a diamond, never wore a piece of point-lace, 
never had a velvet dress, and have been perfectly 
happy, and just as much respected as if I had. Who 
ever thought of objecting to me for not having them ? 
Nobody, as I ever heard." 

" Certainly not, mamma," said Marianne. 

" The thing I have always said to you girls is, that 
you were not to expect to live like richer people, not 
to begin to tr}^, not to think or inquire about certain 
rates of expenditure, or take the first step in certain 
directions. We have moved on all our life after a 
very antiquated and old-fashioned mode. We have 
had our little old-fashioned house, our little old-fash- 
ioned ways." 

" Except the parlor-carpet, and what came of it, my 
dear," said I, mischievously. 

" Yes, except the parlor-carpet," said my wife, with 
a conscious twinkle, " and the things that came of it ; 
^here was a concession there, but one can't be wise 
always." 

" We talked mamma into that," said Jenny. 



r8'2 House and Home Papers, 

" But one thing is certain," said my wife, — " that, 
though I have had an antiquated, plain house, and 
plain furniture, and plain dress, and not the begin- 
ning of a thing such as many of my neighbors have 
possessed, I have spent more money than many of 
them for real comforts. While I had young children, 
I kept more and better servants than many women 
who wore Cashmeres and diamonds. I thought it 
better to pay extra wages to a really good, trusty 
woman who lived with me from year to year, and 
relieved me of some of my heaviest family-cares, 
than to have ever so much lace locked away in my 
drawers. We always were able to go into the coun- 
try to spend our summers, and to keep a good family- 
horse and carriage for daily driving, — by which means 
we afforded, as a family, very poor patronage to the 
medical profession. Then we built our house, and 
while we left out a great many expensive common- 
places that other people think they must have, we 
put in a profusion of bathing accommodations such 
as very few people think of having. There never 
was a time when we did not feel able to afford to 
do what was necessar}^ to preserve or to restore 
health ; and for this I always drew on the surplus 
fund laid up by my very unfashionable housekeep- 
ing and dressing." 

" Your mother has had," said I, " what is the great 



Economy, 183 

fvant In America, perfect independence of mind to go 
her f'wn way without regard to the way others go. I 
thiijfc there is, for some reason, more false shame 
among Americans about economy than among Euro- 
peans. ' I cannot afford it ^ is more seldom heard 
among us. A young man beginning life, whose in- 
come may be from five to eight hundred a year, 
thinks it elegant and gallant to affect a careless air 
about money, especially among ladies, — to hand it 
out freely, and put back his change without counting 
it, — to wear a watch-chain and studs and shirt-fronts 
like those of some young millionnaire. None but the 
most expensive tailors, shoemakers, and hatters will 
do for him ; and then he grumbles at the dearness of 
living, and declares that he cannot get along on his 
salary. The same is true of young girls, and of mar- 
ried men and women too, — the whole of them are 
ashamed of economy. The cares that wear out life 
and health in many households are of a nature that 
cannot be cast on God, or met by any promise from 
the Bible, — it is not care for * food convenient,' or 
for comfortable raiment, but care to keep up false ap- 
pearances, and to stretch a narrow income over the 
space that can be covered only by a wider one. 

" The poor widow in her narrow lodgings, with her 
monthly rent staring her hourly in the face, and her 
bread and meat and candles and meal all to be paid 



184 House a7td Home Papers. 

for on delivery or not obtained at all, may find com- 
fort in the good old Book, reading of that other 
widow whose wasting measure of oil and last failing 
handful of meal were of such account before her 
Father in heaven that a prophet was sent to recruit 
them ; and when customers do not pay, or wages are 
cut down, she can enter into her chamber, and when 
she hath shut her door, present to her Father in 
heaven His sure promise that with the fowls of the 
air she shall be fed and with the lilies of the field she 
shall be clothed : but what promises are there for her 
who is racking her brains on the ways and means to 
provide as sumptuous an entertainment of oysters and 
Champagne at her next party as her richer neighbor, 
or to compass that great bargain which shall give her 
a point-lace set almost as handsome as that of Mrs. 
Croesus, who has ten times her income ? " 

" But, papa," said Marianne, with a twinge of that 
exacting sensitiveness by which the child is character- 
ized, "I think I am an economist, thanks to you and 
mamma, so far as knowing just what my income is, 
and keeping within it ; but that does not satisfy me, 
and it seems that is n't all of economy ; — the ques- 
tion that haunts me is. Might I not make my little all 
do more and better than I do ? " 

"There," said I, "you have hit the broader and 
deeper signification of economy, which is, in fact, the 



Economy. 185 

science of comparative values. In its highest sense, 
economy is a just judgment of the comparative value 
of things, — money only the means of enabling one 
to express that value. This is the reason why the 
whole matter is so full of difficulty, — why every one 
criticises his neighbor in this regard. Human beings 
are so various, the necessities of each are so different, 
they are made comfortable or uncomfortable by such 
opposite means, that the spending of other people's 
incomes must of necessity often look unwise from 
our stand-point. For this reason multitudes of peo- 
ple who cannot be accused of exceeding their in- 
comes often seem to others to be spending them fool- 
ishly and extravagantly." 

" But is there no standard of value ? " said Mari- 
anne. 

"There are certain things upon which there is a 
pretty general agreement, verbally, at least, among 
mankind. For instance, it is generally agreed that 
health is an indispensable good, — that money is well 
spent that secures it, and worse than ill spent that 
ruins it. 

" With this standard in mind, how much money is 
wasted even by people who do not exceed their in- 
come ! Here a man builds a house, and pays, in 
the first place, ten thousand more than he need, for a 
location in a fashionable part of the city, though the 



1 86 House and Home Papers, 

air will be closer and the chances of health less ; he 
spends three or four thousand more on a stone front, 
on marble mantles imported from Italy, on plate-glass 
windows, plated hinges, and a thousand nice points 
of finish, and has perhaps but one bath-room for a 
whole household, and that so connected with his 
own apartment that nobody but himself and his wife 
can use it. 

" Another man buys a lot in an open, airy situation, 
which fashion has not made expensive, and builds 
without a stone front, marble mantels, or plate-glass 
windows, but has a perfect system of ventilation 
through his house, and bathing-rooms in every story, 
so that the children and guests may all, without in- 
convenience, enjoy the luxury of abundant water. 

" The first rpends for fashion and show, the second 
for health and comfort. 

" Here is a man that will buy his wife a diamond 
bracelet and a lace shawl, and take her yearly to 
Washington to show ofif her beauty in ball-dresses, 
who yet will not let her pay wages which will com- 
mand any but the poorest and most inefficient domes- 
tic service. The woman is worn out, her life made a 
desert by exhaustion consequent on a futile attempt to 
keep up a showy establishment with only half the 
hands needed for the purpose. Another family will 
give brilliant parties, have a gay season every year at 



Economy, 187 

the first hotels at Newport, and not be able to afford 
the wife a fire in her chamber in midwinter, or the 
servants enough food to keep them from constantly 
deserting. The damp, mouldy, dingy cellar-kitchen, 
the cold, windy, desolate attic, devoid of any comfort, 
where the domestics are doomed to pass their whole 
time, are witnesses to what such families consider 
economy. Economy in the view of some is undis- 
guised slipshod slovenliness in the home-circle for 
the sake of fine clothes to be shown abroad; it is 
undisguised hard selfishness to servants and depend- 
ants, counting their every approach to comfort a 
needless waste, — grudging the Roman-Catholic cook 
her cup of tea at dinner on Friday, when she must 
not eat meat, — and murmuring that a cracked, sec- 
ond-hand looking-glass must be got for the servants' 
room : what business have they to want to know how 
they look ? 

" Some families will employ the cheapest physician, 
without regard to his ability to kill or cure ; some will 
treat diseases in their incipiency with quack med- 
icines, bought cheap, hoping thereby to fend off the 
doctor's bill. SomxC women seem to be pursued by an 
evil demon of economy, which, like an ignis fatuus in 
a bog, delights constantly to tumble them over into 
the mire of expense. They are dismayed at the quan- 
tity of sugar in the recipe for preserves, leave out a 



1 88 House and Home Papers, 

quarter, and the whole ferments and is spoiled. They 
cannot by any means be induced at any one time to 
buy enough siik to make a dress, and the dress finally, 
after many convulsions and alterations, must be thrown 
by altogether, as too scanty. They get poor needles, 
poor thread, poor sugar, poor raisins, poor tea, poor 
coal. One wonders, in looking at their blackened, 
smouldering grates, in a freezing day, what the fire is 
there at all for, — it certainly warms nobody. The 
only thing they seem likely to be lavish in is funeral 
expenses, which come in the wake of leaky shoes and 
imperfect clothing. These funeral expenses at last 
swallow all, since nobody can dispute an undertaker's 
bill. One pities these joyless beings. Economy, in- 
stead of a rational act of the judgment, is a morbid 
monomania, eating the pleasure out of life, and haunt- 
ing them to the grave. 

" Some people's ideas of economy seem to run sim- 
ply in the line of eating. Their flour is of an extra 
brand, their meat the first cut ; the delicacies of every 
season, in their dearest stages, come home to their 
table with an apologetic smile, — ' It was scanda- 
lously dear, my love, but I thought we must just treat 
ourselves.' And yet these people cannot afford to 
buy books, and pictures they regard as an unthought- 
of extra%"agance. Trudging home with fifty dollars' 
worth of delicacies on his arm, Smith meets Jones 



Economy, 189 

who IS exulting with a bag of crackers under one arm 
and a choice little bit of an oil painting under the 
other, which he thinks a bargain at fifty dollars. ^ I 
can't afford to buy pictures,' Smith says to his spoijse, 
* and I don't know how Jones and his wife mana^^e/ 
Jones and his wife will live on bread and milk for a 
month, and she will turn her best gown the third time, 
but they will have their picture, and they are happy. 
Jones's picture remains, and Smith's fifty dollars' worth 
of oysters and canned fruit to-morrow will be gone 
forever. Of all modes of spending money, the swal- 
lowing of expensive dainties brings the least return. 
There is one step lower than this, — the consuming 
of luxuries that are injurious to the health. If all the 
money spent on tobacco and liquors could be spent 
in books and pictures, I predict that nobody's health 
would be a whit less sound, and houses would be 
vastly more attractive. There is enough money spent 
in smoking, drinking, and over-eating to give every 
family in the community a good library, to hang every- 
body's parlor-walls with lovely pictures, to set up in 
every house a conservatory which should bloom all 
winter with choice flowers, to furnish every dwelling 
with ample bathing and warming accommodations, 
even down to the dwellings of the poor ; and in the 
millennium I believe this is the way things are to be. 
" In these times of peril and suffering, if the inquiry 



IQO House and Heme Papers, 

arises, How shall there be retrenchment ? I answer, 
First and foremost retrench things needless, doubtful, 
and positively hurtful, as rum, tobacco, and all the 
meerschaums of divers colors that do accompany the 
same. Second, retrench all eating not necessary to 
health and comfort. A French family would live in 
luxury on the leavings that are constantly coming from 
the tables of those who call themselves in middling 
circumstances. There are superstitions of the table 
that ought to be broken through. Why must you 
always have cake in your closet ? why need you feel 
undone to entertain a guest with no cake on your tea- 
table ? Do without it a year, and ask yourselves if 
you or your children, or any one else, have suffered 
materially in consequence. 

" Why is it imperative that you should have two or 
three courses at every meal ? Try the experiment of 
having but one, and that a very good one, and see if 
any great amount of suffering ensues. Why must 
social intercourse so largely consist in eating? In 
Paris there is a very pretty custom. Each family has 
one evening in the week when it stays at home and 
receives friends. Tea, with a little bread and butter 
and cake, served in the most informal way, is the 
only refreshment. The rooms are full, busy, bright, 
— everything as easy and joyous as if a monstrous 
supper, with piles of jelly and mountains of cake 



Economy, 191 

were waiting to give the company a nightmare at the 
close. 

" Said a lady, pointing to a gentleman and his wife 
in a social circle of this kind, ' I ought to know them 
well, — I have seen them every week iox twenty years.' 
It is certainly pleasant and confirmative of social enjoy- 
ment for friends to eat tc^ther ; but a little enjoyed 
in this way answers the purpose as well as a great 
deal, and better too." 

"Well, papa," said Marianne, "in the matter of 
dress now, — how much ought one to spend just to 
look as others do ? " 

" I will tell you what I saw the other night, girls> 
in the parlor of one of our hotels. Two middle-aged 
Quaker ladies came gliding in, with calm, cheerful 
faces, and lustrous dove-colored silks. By their con- 
versation I found that they belonged to that class of 
women among the Friends who devote themselves to 
travelling on missions of benevolence. They had just 
completed a tour of all the hospitals for wounded sol- 
diers in the country, where they had been carrying 
comforts, arranging, advising, and soothing by their 
cheerful, gentle presence. They were now engaged 
on another mission, to the lost and erring of their owi? 
sex ; night after night, guarded by a policeman, they 
had ventured after midnight into the dance-houses 
where girls are being led to ruin, and with gentle 



192 House and Home Papers, 

words of tender, motherly counsel sought to win them 
from their fatal ways, — telling them where they might 
go the next day to find friends who would open to 
them an asylum and aid them to seek a better life. 

"As I looked upon these women, dressed with such 
modest purity, I began secretly to think that the 
Apostle was not wrong, when he spoke of women 
adorning themselves with the ornament of a meek 
and quiet spirit ; for the habitual gentleness of their 
expression, the calmness and purity of the lines in 
their faces, the delicacy and simplicity of their apparel, 
seemed of themselves a rare and peculiar beauty. 
I could not help thinking that fashionable bonnets, 
flowing lace sleeves, and dresses elaborately trimmed 
could not have improved even their outward appear- 
ance. Doubtless, their simple wardrobe needed but 
a small trunk in travelling from place to place, and 
hindered but little their prayers and ministrations. 

" Now, it is true, all women are not called to such 
a life as this ; but might not all women take a leaf at 
least from their book .^ I submit the inquiry humbly. 
It seems to me that there are many who go monthly 
to the sacrament, and receive it with' sincere devotion, 
and who give thanks each time sincerely that they are 
thus made ^ members incorporate in the mystical body 
of Christ,' who have never thought of this membership 
as meaning that they should share Christ's sacrifices 



Economy. 193 

for lost souls, or abridge themselves of one ornament 
or encounter one inconvenience for the sake of those 
wandering sheep for whom he died. Certainly there 
is a higher economy which we need to learn, — that 
which makes all things subservient to the spiritual and 
immortal, and that not merely to the good of our own 
souls and those of our family, but of all who are knit 
with us in the great bonds of human brotherhood, 

" There* have been from time to time, among weif- 
meaning Christian people, retrenchment societies on 
high moral grounds, which have failed for want of 
knowledge how to manage the complicated question 
of necessaries and luxuries. These words have a sig- 
nification in the case of different people as varied as 
the varieties of human habit and constitution. It is a 
department impossible to be bound by external rules ; 
but none the less should every high-minded Christian 
soul in this matter have a law unto itself. It may 
safely be laid down as a general rule, that no income, 
however large or however small, should be unblessed 
by the divine touch of self-sacrifice. Something for 
the poor, the sorrowing, the hungry, the tempted, and 
the weak should be taken from what is our ow7i at the 
expense of some personal sacrifice, or we suffer more 
morally than the brother from whom we withdraw it. 
Even the Lord of all, when dwelling among men, out 
of that slender private purse which he accepted for 
9 



194 House and Home Papers, 

his little family of chosen ones, had ever something 
reserved to give to the poor. It is easy to say, ^ It 
is but a drop in the bucket. I cannot remove the 
great mass of misery in the world. What little I could 
save or give does nothing.' It does this, if no more, 
— it prevents one soul, and that soul your own, from 
drying and hardening into utter selfishness and insen- 
sibility ; it enables you to say I have done something ; 
taken one atom from the great heap of sins and mis- 
eries and placed it on the side of good. 

" The Sisters of Charity and the Friends, each with 
their different costume of plainness and self-denial, 
and other noble-hearted women of no particular out- 
ward order, but kindred in spirit, have shown to 
womanhood, on the battle-field and in the hospital, 
a more excellent way, — a beauty and nobility before 
which all the common graces and ornaments of the 
sex fade, appesM lik^ dim candles by the pure, eternal 
stars." 



IX. 

SERVANTS. 

IN the course of my papers various domestic revo- 
lutions have occurred. Our Marianne has gone 
from us with a new name to a new life, and a modest 
little establishment not many squares off claims about 
as much of my wife's and Jenny's busy thoughts as 
those of the proper mistress. 

Marianne, as I always foresaw, is a careful and 
somewhat anxious housekeeper. Her tastes are fas- 
tidious j she is made for exactitude : the smallest 
departures from the straight line appear to her shock- 
ing deviations. She had always lived in a house 
where everything had been formed to quiet and order 
under the ever-present care and touch of her mother ; 
nor had she ever participated in these cares more than 
to do a little dusting of the parlor ornaments, or wash 
the best china, or make sponge-cake or chocolate- 
caramels. Certain conditions of life had always ap- 
peared so to be matters of course that she had never 
conceived of a house without them. It never occurred 
to her that such bread and biscuit as she saw at the 



196 House a7td Home Papers 

home-table would not always and of course appear at 
every table, — that the silver would not always be as 
bri^^ht, the glass as clear, the salt as fine and smooth, 
the plates and dishes as nicely arranged as she had 
always seen them, apparently without the thought or 
care of any one, — for my wife is one of those house- 
keepers whose touch is so fine that no one feels it 
She is never heard scolding or reproving, — ne\ er 
entertains her company with her recipes for cookery 
or the faults of her servants. She is so unconcerned 
about receiving her own personal share of credit for 
the good appearance of her establishment, that even 
the children of the house have not supposed that there 
is any particular will of hers in the matter, — it all 
seems the natural consequence of having very good 
servants. 

One phenomenon they had never seriously reflected 
on, — that, under all the changes of the domestic cab- 
inet which are so apt to occur in American households, 
the same coffee, the same bread and biscuit, the same 
nicely prepared dishes and neatly laid table always 
gladdened their eyes ; and from this they inferred only 
that good servants were more abundant than most 
people had supposed. They were somewhat surprised 
when these marvels were wrought by professedly green 
hands, but were given to suppose that these green 
hands must have had some remarkable quickness or 



Servants, 197 

aptitude for acquiring. That sparkling jelly, well-fla- 
vored ice-creams, clear soups, and delicate biscuits 
could be made by a raw Irish girl, fresh from her 
native Erin, seemed to them a proof of the genius of 
the race ; and my wife, who never felt it important to 
attain to the reputation of a cook, quietly let it pass. 

For some time, therefore, after the inauguration of 
the new household, there was trouble in the camp. 
Sour bread had appeared on the table, — bitter, acrid 
coffee had shocked and astonished the palate, — lint 
had been observed on tumblers, and the spoons had 
sometimes dingy streaks on the brightness of their 
first bridal polish, — beds were detected made shock- 
ingly awry, — and Marianne came burning with indig- 
nation to her mother. 

" Such a little family as we have, and two strong 
girls," said she, — " everything ought to be perfect ; 
there is really nothing to do. Think of a whole batch 
of bread absolutely sour ! and when I gave that away, 
then this morning another exactly like it ! and when I 
talked to cook about it, she said she had lived in 
this and that family, and her bread had always been 
praised as equal to the baker's ! " 

*' I don't doubt she is right," said I. " Many fana- 
ilies never have anything but sour bread from one end 
of the year to the other, eating it unp^rceiying, an4 
with good cheer ; and they buy also sour bread of the 



198 House and Home Papers. 

baker, with like approbation, — lightness being in 
their estimation the only virtue necessary in the ar- 
ticle." 

" Could you not correct her fault ? " suggested my 
wife. 

" I have done all I can. I told her we could not 
have such bread, that it was dreadful; Bob says it 
would give him the dyspepsia in a week ; and then 
she went and made exactly the same ; — it seems to 
me mere wilfulness." 

" But," said I, " suppose, instead of such general 
directions, you should analyze her proceedings and 
find out just where she makes her mistake, — is the 
root of the trouble in the yeast, or in the time she 
begins it, letting it rise too long? — the time, you 
know, should vary so much with the temperature of 
the weather." 

"As to that," said Marianne, "I know nothing. I 
never noticed; it never was my business to make 
bread ; it always seemed quite a simple process, mix- 
ing yeast and flour and kneading it ; and our bread at 
home was always good." 

"It seems, then, my dear, that you have come to 
your profession without even having studied it." 

My wife smiled, and said, — 

" You know, Marianne, I proposed to you to be our 
family bread-maker for one month of the year before 
you married." 



Servants. 199 

" Yes, mamma, I remember ; but I was like other 
girls; I thought there was no need of it. I never 
liked to do such things ; perhaps I had better have 
done it." 

" You certainly had," said I ; " for the first business 
of a housekeeper in America is that of a teacher. 
She can have a good table only by having practical 
knowledge, and tact in imparting it. If she under- 
stands her business practically and experimentally, 
her eye detects at once the weak spot; it requires 
only a little tact, some patience, some clearness in 
giving directions, and all comes right. I venture to 
say that your mother would have exactly such bread 
as always appears on our table, and have it by the 
hands of your cook, because she could detect and 
explain to her exactly her error." 

" Do you know," said my wife, " what yeast she 
uses ? " 

" I believe," said Marianne, " it 's a kind she makes 
herself I think I heard her say so. I know she 
makes a great fuss about it, and rather values her- 
self upon it. She is evidently accustomed to being 
praised for her bread, and feels mortified and angry, 
and I don't know how to manage her." 

" Well," said I, " if you carry your watch to a 
watchmaker, and undertake to show him how to 
regulate the machinery, he laughs and goes on his 



200 House and Home Papers, 

own way; but if a brother-machinist makes sugges- 
tions, he listens respectfully. So, when a v/oman who 
knov/s nothing of woman's work undertakes to in- 
struct one who knows more than she does, she makes 
no impression ; but a woman who has been trained 
experimentally, and shows she understands the matter 
thoroughly, is listened to with respect" 

"I think," said my wife, "that your Bridget is worth 
teaching. She is honest, well-principled, and tidy. 
She has good recommendations from excellent fam- 
ilies, whose ideas of good bread it appears differ from 
ours ; and with a little good-nature, tact, and patience, 
she will come into your ways." 

" But the coffee, mamma, — you would not imagine 
it to be from the same bag with your own, so dark 
and so bitter ; what do you suppose she has done 
to it?" 

"Simply this," said my wife. "She has let the 
berries stay a few moments too long over the fire, — 
they are burnt, instead of being roasted; and there 
are people who think it essential to good coffee that 
it should look black, and have a strong, bitter flavor. 
A very little change in the preparing will alter this." 

" Now," said I, " Marianne, if you want my advice, 
I '11 give it to you gratis : — Make your own bread for 
one month. Simple as the process seems, I think it 
ivill take as long as that to give you a thorough knowl- 



Servants. 201 

edge of all the possibilities in the case ; but after that 
you will never need to make any more, — you will be 
able to command good bread by the aid of all sorts 
of servants ; you will, in other words, be a thoroughly 
prepared teacher." 

" I did not think," said Marianne, " that so simple 
a thing required so much attention." 

*' It is simple," said my wife, " and yet requires a 
delicate care and watchfulness. There are fifty ways 
to spoil good bread ; there are a hundred little things 
to be considered and allowed for that require accurate 
observ^ation and experience. The same process that 
will raise good bread in cold weather will make sour 
bread in the heat of summer ; different qualities of 
flour require variations in treatment, as also different 
sorts and conditions of yeast ; and when all is done, 
the baking presents another series of possibilities 
which require exact attention." 

"So it appears," said Marianne, gayly, "that I must 
begin to study my profession at the eleventh hour." 

"Better late than never," said I. "But there is 
this advantage on your side : a well-trained mind, 
accustomed to reflect, analyze, and generalize, has an 
advantage over uncultured minds even of double ex- 
perience. Poor as your cook is, she now knows more 
of her business than you do. After a very brief 
period of attention and experiment, you will not only 
9* 



202 House and Home Papers. 

know more than she does, but you will convince her 
that you do, which is quite as much to the purpose." 

" In the same manner," said my wife, " you will 
have to give lessons to your other girl on the washing 
of silver and the making of beds. Good servants do 
not often come to us ; they must be made by patience 
and training ; and if a girl has a good disposition and 
a reasonable degree of handiness, and the house- 
keeper understands her profession, she may make a 
good servant out of an indifferent one. Some of my 
best girls have been those who came to me directly 
from the ship, with no preparation but docility and 
some natural quickness. The hardest cases to be 
managed are not of those who have been taught noth- 
ing, but of those who have been taught wrongly, — 
who come to you self-opinionated, with ways which 
are distasteful to you, and contrary to the genius of 
your housekeeping. Such require that their mistress 
shall understand at least so much of the actual con- 
duct of affairs as to prove to the servant that there are 
better ways than those in which she has hitherto been 
trained." 

"Don't you think, mamma," said Marianne, "that 
there has been a sort of reaction against woman's 
work in our day? So much has been said of the 
higher sphere of woman, and so much has been done 
io find some better work for her, that insensibly, T 



Servants, 203 

think, almost everybody begins to feel that it is rather 
degrading for a woman in good society to be much 
tied down to famih affairs." 

" Especially," said my wife, " since in these Wo- 
man's-Rights Conventions there is so much indigna- 
tion expressed at those who would confine her ideas 
to the kitchen and nursery." 

"There is reason in all things," said I. " Woman' s- 
Rights Conventions are a protest against many former 
absurd, unreasonable ideas, — the mere physical and 
culinary idea of womanhood as connected only with 
puddings and shirt-buttons, the unjust and unequal 
burdens which the laws of harsher ages had cast upon 
the sex. Many of the women connected with these 
movements are as superior in everything properly 
womanly as they are in exceptional talent and cul- 
ture. There is no manner of doubt that the sphere 
of woman is properly to be enlarged, and that re- 
publican governments in particular are to be saved 
from corruption and failure only by allowing to woman 
this enlarged sphere. Every woman has rights as a 
human being first, which belong to no sex, and 
ought to be as freely conceded to her as if she were 
a man, — and first and foremost, the great right of 
doing anything which God and Nature evidently have 
fitted her to excel in. If she be made a natural 
orator, like Miss Dickenson, or an astronomer, like 



204 House and Home Papers, 

Mrs. Somemlle, or a singer, like Grisi, let not the 
technical rules of womanhood be thrown in the way 
of her free use of her powers. Nor can there be 
any reason shown why a woman's vote in the state 
should not be received with as much respect as in 
the family. A state is but an association of families, 
and laws relate to the rights and immunities which 
touch woman's most private and immediate wants 
and dearest hopes ; and there is no reason why sister, 
wife, and mother should be more powerless in the 
state than in the home. Nor does it make a woman 
unwomanly to express an opinion by dropping a slip 
of paper into a box, more than to express that same 
opinion by conversation. In fact, there is no doubt, 
that, in all matters relating to the interests of educa- 
tion, temperance, and religion, the state would be a 
material gainer by receiving the votes of women. 

" But, having said all this, I must admit, per contra, 
not only a great deal of crude, disagreeable talk in 
these conventions, but a too great tendency of the 
age to make the education of wom.en anti-domestic. 
It seems as if the world never could advance, except 
like ships under a head-wind, tacking and going too 
far, now in this direction, and now in the opposite. 
Our common-school system now rejects sewing from 
the education of girls, which very properly used 
to occupy many hours daily in school a generation 



Servants. 205 

ago. The daughters of laborers and artisans are 
put through algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and the 
higher mathematics, to the entire neglect of that 
learning which belongs distinctively to woman. A 
girl cannot keep pace with her class, if she gives 
any time to domestic matters ; and accordingly she 
is excused from them all during the whole term of 
her education. The boy of a family, at an early age, 
is put to a trade, or the labors of a farm ; the father 
becomes impatient of his support, and requires of 
him to care for himself Hence an interrupted educa- 
tion, — learning coming by snatches in the winter 
months or in the intervals of work. As the result, 
the females in our country towns are commonly, in 
mental culture, vastly in advance of the males of 
the same household ; but with this comes a physical 
delicacy, the result of an exclusive use of the brain 
and a neglect of the muscular system, with great 
inefficiency in practical domestic duties. The race 
of strong, hardy, cheerful girls, that used to grow up 
in country places, and made the bright, neat. New 
England kitchens of old times, — the girls that could 
wash, iron, brew, bake, harness a horse and drive him, 
no less than braid straw, embroider, draw, paint, and 
read innumerable books, — this race of women, pride 
of olden time, is daily lessening ; and in their stead 
come the fragile, easily fatigued, languid girls of 3 



2o6 House and Home Papers, 

modern age, drilled in book-learning, ignorant of 
common things. The great danger of ail this, and 
of the evils that come from it, is that society by and 
by will turn as blindly against female intellectual 
culture as it now advocates it, and, having worked 
disproportionately one way, will work disproportion- 
ately in the opposite direction." 

" The fact is," said my wife, " that domestic service 
is the great problem of life here in America; the 
happiness of families, their thrift, well-being, and 
comfort, are more affected by this than by any one 
thing else. Our girls, as they have been brought 
up, cannot perform the labor of their own families, 
as in those simpler, old-fashioned days you tell of; 
and what is worse, they have no practical skill with 
which to instruct servants, and servants come to us, 
as a class, raw and untrained ; so what is to be done ? 
In the present state of prices, the board of a domestic 
costs double her wages, and the waste she makes is 
a more serious matter still. Suppose you give us an 
article upon this subject in your * House and Home 
Papers.' You could not have a better one." 

So I sat down, and wrote thus on 

Servants and Service. 

Many of the domestic evils in America originate 
boi the fact, that, while society here is professedly 



Servants, 207 

based on new principles which ought to make social 
life in every respect different from the life of the 
Old World, yet these principles have never been so 
thought out and applied as to give consistency and 
harmony to our daily relations. America starts with 
a political organization based on a declaration of the 
primitive freedom and equality of all men. Every 
human being, according to this principle, stands on 
the same natural level with every other, and has the 
same chance to rise according to the degree of power 
or capacity given by the Creator. All our civil in- 
stitutions are designed to preserve this equality, as 
far as possible, from generation to generation : there 
is no entailed property, there are no hereditary titles, 
no monopolies, no privileged classes, — all are to be 
tts free to rise and fall as the waves of the sea. 

The condition of domestic service, however, still 
retains about it something of the influences from 
feudal times, and from the near presence of slavery 
in neighboring States. All English literature, all the 
literature of the world, describes domestic service in 
the old feudal spirit and with the old feudal language, 
which regarded the master is belonging to a privi- 
leged class and the servant to an inferior one. There 
is not a play, not a poem, not a novel, not a history, 
that does not present this view. The master's rights, 
like the rights of kings, were supposed to rest in his 



2o8 House and Home Papers, 

being born in a superior rank. The good servant 
was one who, from childhood, had learned " to order 
himself lowly and reverently to all his betters." "When 
New England brought to these shores the theory of 
democracy, she brought, in the persons of the first 
pilgrims, the habits of thought and of action formed 
in aristocratic commifnities. Winthrop's Journal, and 
all the old records of the earlier colonists, show 
households where masters and mistresses stood on 
the " right divine " of the privileged classes, howso- 
ever they might have risen up against authorities 
themselves. 

The first consequence of this state of things was 
a universal rejection of domestic service in all classes 
of American-born society. For a generation or two, 
there was, indeed, a sort of interchange of family 
strength, — sons and daughters engaging in the ser- 
vice of neighboring families, in default of a sufficient 
working-force of their own, but always on conditions 
of strict equality. The assistant was to share the 
table, the family sitting-room, and every honor and 
attention that might be claimed by son or daughter. 
When families increased in refinement and education 
so as to make these conditions of close intimacy 
with more uncultured neighbors disagreeable, they 
had to choose between such intimacies and the per- 
formance of their own domestic toil. No wages 



Servants, 209 

could induce a son or daughter of New England to 
take the condition of a servant on terms which they 
thought applicable to that of a slave. The sligh'^est 
hint of a separate table was resented as an insult; 
not to enter the front-door, and not to sit in the fiont- 
parlor on state-occasions, was bitterly commented on 
as a personal indignity. 

The well-taught, self-respecting daughters of farm- 
ers, the class most valuable in domestic service, gradu- 
ally retired from it. They preferred any other em- 
ployment, however laborious. Beyond all doubt, the 
labors of a well-regulated family are more healthy, 
more cheerful, more interesting, because less monoto- 
nous, than the mechanical toils of a factor}' ; yet 
the girls of New England, with one consent, preferred 
the factory, and left the whole business of domestic 
service to a foreign population ; and they did it mainly 
because they would not take positions in families as 
an inferior laboring-class by the side of others of 
their own age who assumed as their prerogative to 
live without labor. 

" I can't let you have one of my daughters,*-' said 
an energetic matron to her neighbor from the city, 
who was seeking for a servant in her summer vaca- 
tion ; " if you had n't daughters of your own, maybe 
I would ; but my girls ain't going to work so that your 
girls may live in idleness." 



2IO House and Home Papers. 

It was vain to offer money. "We don't need your 
money, ma'am, we can support ourselves in other 
ways ; my girls can braid straw, and bind shoes, but 
they ain't going to be slaves to anybody." 

In the Irish and German servants who took the 
place of Americans in families, there was, to begin 
with, the tradition of education in favor of a higher 
class ; but even the foreign population became more 
or less infected with the spirit of democracy. They 
came to this country with vague notions of freedom 
and equality, and in ignorant and uncultivated people 
such ideas are often more unreasonable for being 
vague. They did not, indeed, claim a seat at the 
table and in the parlor, but they repudiated many 
of those habits of respect and courtesy which be- 
longed to their former condition, and asserted their 
own will and way in the round, unvarnished phrase 
which they supposed to be their right as republican 
citizens. Life became a sort of domestic wrangle and 
struggle between the employers, who secretly confessed 
their weakness, but endeavored openly to assume the 
air and bearing of authority, and the employed, who 
knew their power and insisted on their privileges. 
From this cause domestic service in America has 
had less of mutual kindliness than in old countries. 
Its terms have been so ill understood and defined 
that both parties have assumed the defensive ; and 



Servants. 211 

a common topic of conversation in American female 
society has often been the general servile war v/hich 
in one form or another was going on in their different 
families, — a war as interminable as would be a strug- 
gle betw^een aristocracy and common people, unde- 
fined by any bill of rights or constitution, and there- 
fore opening fields for endless disputes. In England, 
the class who go to service are a class, and service is 
a profession ; the distance between them and their 
employers is so marked and defined, and all the cus- 
toms and requirements of the position are so perfectly 
understood, that the m.aster or mistress has no fear of 
being compromised by condescension, and no need of 
the external voice or air of authority. The higher up 
in the social scale one goes, the more courteous seems 
to become the intercourse of master and servant ; the 
more perfect and real the power, the more is it veiled 
in outward expression, — commands are phrased as 
requests, and gentleness of voice and manner covers 
an authority which no one would think of offending 
without trembling. 

But in America all is undefined. In the first place, 
there is no class who mean to make domestic ser\dce a 
profession to live and die in. It is universally an ex- 
pedient, a stepping-stone to something higher; your 
best servants always have something else in view as 
soon as they have laid by a little money ; some formic of 



212 House a7id Home Papers, 

independence which shall give them a home of their 
own is constantly in mind. Families look forward to 
the buying of landed homesteads, and the scattered 
brothers and sisters work awhile in domestic service 
to gain the common fund for the purpose ; your seam- 
stress intends to become a dress-maker, and take in 
work at her own house ; your cook is pondering a 
marriage with the baker, which shall transfer her toils 
from your cooking-stove to her own. Young women 
are eagerly rushing into every other employment, till 
female trades and callings are all overstocked. We 
are continually harrowed with tales of the sufferings 
of distressed needle-women, of the exactions and ex- 
tortions practised on the frail sex in the many branches 
of labor and trade at which they try their hands ; and 
yet women will encounter all these chances of ruin 
and starvation rather than make up their minds to 
permanent domestic service. Now what is the mat- 
ter with domestic service ? One would think, on the 
face of it, that a calling which gives a settled home, a 
comfortable room, rent-free, with fire and lights, good 
board and lodging, and steady, well-paid wages, would 
certainly offer more attractions than the making of 
shirts for tenpence, with all the risks of providing 
one's own sustenance and shelter. 

I think it is mainly from the want of a definite idea 
of the true position of a servant under our democratic 



Servants. 213 

institutions that domestic service is so shunned and 
avoided in America, that it is the very last thing which 
an intelligent young woman will look to for a living. 
It is more the want of personal respect toward those 
in that position than the labors incident to it which 
repels our people from it Many would be willing to 
perform these labors, but they are not willing to place 
themselves in a situation where their self-respect is 
hourly wounded by the implication of a degree of infe- 
riority which does not follow any kind of labor or service 
in this country but that of the family. 

There exists in the minds of employers an unsus- 
pected spirit of superiority, which is stimulated into 
an active form by the resistance which democracy in- 
spires in the working-class. Many families think of 
servants only as a necessary evil, their wages as exac- 
tions, and all that is allowed them as so much taken 
from the family ; and they seek in every way to get 
from them as much and to give them as little as pos- 
sible. Their rooms are the neglected, ill-furnished, 
incommodious ones, — and the kitchen is the most 
cheerless and comfortless place in the house. Other 
families, more good-natured and liberal, provide their 
domestics with more suitable accommodations, and 
are more indulgent ; but there is still a latent spirit 
of something like contempt for the position. That 
ihey treat their servants with so much consideration 



214 House and Home Papers, 

seems to them a merit entitling them to the most 
prostrate gratitude ; and they are constantly disap- 
pointed and shocked at that want of sense of infe- 
riority on the part of these people which leads them 
to appropriate pleasant rooms, good furniture, and 
good living as m.ere matters of common justice. 

It seems to be a constant surprise to some em- 
ployers that servants should insist on having the same 
human wants as themselves. Ladies who yawn in their 
elegantly furnished parlors, among books and pictures, 
if they have not company, parties, or opera to diversify 
the evening, seem astonished and half indignant that 
cook and chambermaid are more disposed to go out 
for an evening gossip than to sit on hard chairs in the 
kitchen where they have been toiling all day. The 
pretty chambermaid's anxieties about her dress, the 
time she spends at her small and not very clear mir- 
ror, are sneeringly noticed by those whose toilet-cares 
take up serious hours ; and the question has never 
apparently occurred to them why a serving-maid 
should not want to look pretty as well as her mis- 
tress. She is a woman as well as they, with all a 
woman's wants and weaknesses ; and her dress is as 
much to her as theirs to them. 

A vast deal of trouble among sen^ants arises from 
impertinent interferences and petty tyrannical exac 
tions on the part of employers. Now the authority of 



Servants. 2 1 5 

the master and mistress of a house in regard to their 
domestics extends simply to the things they have con- 
tracted to do and the hours during which they have 
contracted to serve ; otherwise than this, they have no 
more right to interfere wdth them in the disposal of 
their time than with any mechanic whom they employ. 
They have, indeed, a right to regulate the hours of 
their own household, and servants can choose be- 
tween conformity to these hours and the loss of their 
situation j but, within reasonable limits, their right to 
come and go at their own discretion, in their own time, 
should be unquestioned. 

If employers are troubled by the fondness of their 
servants for dancing, evening company, and late hours, 
the proper mode of proceeding is to make these mat- 
ters a subject of distinct contract in hiring. The more 
strictly and perfectly the business matters of the first 
engagement of domestics are conducted, the more 
likelihood there is of mutual quiet and satisfaction in 
the relation. It is quite competent to every house- 
keeper to say what practices are or are not consistent 
with the rules of her family, and what will be incon- 
sistent with the service for which she agrees to pay. 
It is much better to regulate such affairs by cool con- 
tract in the outset than by warm altercations and 
protracted domestic battles. 

As to the terms of social intercourse^ it seems some- 



2i6 House and Home Papers. 

how to be settled in the minds of many employers 
that their servants owe them and their family more 
respect than they and the family owe to the servants. 
But do they ? What is the relation of servant to em- 
ployer in a democratic country ? Precisely that of a 
person who for money performs any kind of service 
for you. The carpenter comes into your house to 
put up a set of shelves, — the cook comes into your 
kitchen to cook your dinner. You never think that 
the carpenter owes you any more respect than you 
owe to him because he is in your house doing your 
behests ; he is your fellow-citizen, you treat him with 
respect, you expect to be treated with respect by him. 
You have a claim on him that he shall do your work 
according to your directions, — no more. Now I ap- 
prehend that there is a very common notion as to the 
position and rights of servants which is quite different 
from this. Is it not a common feeling that a servant 
is one who may be treated with a degree of freedom 
by every member of the family which he or she may 
not return ? Do not people feel at liberty to question 
servants about their private affairs, to comment on 
their dress and appearance, in a manner which they 
would feel to be an impertinence, if reciprocated 1 
Do they not feel at liberty to express dissatisfaction 
with their performances in rude and unceremonious 
terms, to reprove them in the presence of company^ 



Servants, 217 

wliile yet they require that the dissatisfaction of ser- 
vants shall be expressed only in terms of respect ? 
A woman would not feel herself ac liberty to talk to 
her milliner or her dressmakei in language as devoid 
of consideration as she will employ towards her cook 
or chambermaid. Yet both are rendering her a ser- 
vice which she pays for in money, and one is no more 
made her inferior thereby than the other. Both have 
an equal right to be treated with courtesy. The mas- 
ter and mistress of a house have a right to require 
respectful treatment from all whom their roof shelters , 
but they have no more right to exact it of servants 
than of every guest and every child, and they them- 
selves owe it as much to servants as to guests. 

In order that servants may be treated with respect 
and courtesy, it is not necessary, as in simpler patri- 
archal days, that they sit at the family-table. Your 
carpenter or plumber does not feel hurt that you do 
not ask him to dine with you, nor your milliner and 
mantua-maker that you do not exchange ceremonious 
calls and invite them to your parties. It is well un- 
derstood that your relations with them are of a mere 
business character. They never take it as an assump- 
tion of superiority on your part that you do not admit 
them to relations of private intimac}^ There may be 
the most perfect respect and esteem and even friend- 
ship between them and you, notwithstanding. So \K 



2i8 House and Home Papers, 

may be in the case of servants. It is easy to nialce 
any person understand that there are quite other rea- 
sons than the assumption of personal superiority for 
not wishing to admit servants to the family privacy. 
It was not, in fact, to sit in the parlor or at the table, 
in themselves considered, that was the thing aimed at 
by New England girls, — these were valued only as 
signs that they were deemed worthy of respect and 
consideration, and, where freely conceded, were often 
in point of fact declined. 

Let servants feel, in their treatment by their em- 
ployers, and in the atmosphere of the family, that their 
position is held to be a respectable one, let them feel 
in the mistress of the family the charm of unvarying 
consideration and good manners, let their work-rooms 
be made convenient and comfortable, and their pri- 
vate apartments bear some reasonable comparison in 
point of agreeableness to those of other members of 
the family, and domestic service will be more fre- 
quently sought by a superior and self-respecting class. 
There are families in which such a state of things pre- 
vails j and such families, amid the many causes which 
unite to make the tenure of service uncertain, have 
generally been able to keep good permanent servants. 

There is an extreme into which kindly disposed 
people often run with regard to servants, which may 
be mentioned here. They make pets of them. They 



Servants, 219 

give extravagant wages and indiscreet indulgences, 
and, through indolence and easiness of temper, tol- 
erate neglect of duty. Many of the complaints of 
the ingratitude of servants come from those who have 
spoiled them in this way \ while many of the longest 
and most harmonious domestic unions have sprung 
from a simple, quiet course of Christian justice and 
benevolence, a recognition of servants as fellow-beings 
and fellow-Christians, and a doing to them as we would 
in like circumstances that they should do to us. 

The mistresses of American families, whether they 
like it or not, have the duties of missionaries imposed 
upon them by that class from which our supply of 
domestic servants is drawn. They may as well accept 
the position cheerfully, and, as one raw, untrained 
hand after another passes through their family, and 
is instructed by them in the mysteries of good house- 
keeping, comfort themselves with the reflection that 
they are doing something to form good wives and 
mothers for the Republic. 

The complaints made of Irish girls are numerous 
and loud ; the failings of green Erin, alas ! are but 
too open and manifest ; yet, in arrest of judgment, let 
us move this consideration : let us imagine our own 
daughters between the ages of sixteen and twenty- 
four, untaught and inexperienced in domestic affairs 
as they cemmonly are, shipped to a foreign shore to 



220 House and Home Papers. 

seek service in families. It may be questioned whether 
as a whole they would do much better. The girls that 
fill our families and do our house-work are often of 
the age of our own daughters, standing for themselves, 
without mothers to guide them, in a foreign country, 
not only bravely supporting themselves, but sending 
home in every ship remittances to impoverished friends 
left behind. If our daughters did as much for us, 
should we not be proud of their energy and hero- 
ism ? 

VVIien we go into the houses of our country, we find 
a majority of well-kept, well-ordered, and even elegant 
estnblishments where the only hands employed are 
thoje of the daughters of Erin. True, American wo- 
men have been their instructors, and many a weary 
hour of care have they had in the discharge of this 
oSice ; but the result on the whole is beautiful and 
good, and the end of it, doubtless, will be peace. 

In speaking of the office of the American mistress 
as being a missionary one, we are far from recommend- 
ing any controversial interference with the religious 
faith of our servants. It is far better to 'ncite them 
to be good Christians in their own way than to run 
the risk of shaking their faith in all religion b}^ point- 
ing out to them the errors of that in which they have 
been educated. The general purity of life and pro- 
priety of demeanor of so many thousands of unde- 



Servants, 221 

fended young girls cast yearly upon our shores, with 
no home but their church, and no shield but theit 
reUgion, are a suifhcient proof that this religion exerts 
an influence over them not to be lightly trifled with. 
But there is a real unity even in opposite Christian 
forms ; and the Roman Catholic servant and the Prot- 
estant mistress, if alike possessed by the spirit of 
Christ, and striving to conform to the Golden Rule, 
cannot help being one in heart, though one go to 
mass and the other to meeting. 

Finally, the bitter baptism through which we are 
passing, the life-blood dearer than our own which is 
drenching distant fields, should remind us of the pre- 
ciousness of distinctive American ideas. They who 
would seek in their foolish pride to establish the pomp 
of liveried servants in America are doing that which 
is simply absurd. A serv^ant can never in our country 
be the mere appendage to another man, to be marked 
like a sheep with the color of his owner ; he must be 
a fellow-citizen, with an established position of his 
own, free to make contracts, free to come and go, and 
having in his sphere titles to consideration and re- 
spect just as definite as those of any trade or pro- 
fession whatever. 

Moreover, we cannot in this country maintain to 
any great extent large retinues of servants. Even 
with ample fortunes they are forbidden by the gen- 



222 House and Home Papers. 

eral character of society here, which makes them cum- 
brous and difficult to manage. Every mistress of a 
family knows that her cares increase with every addi- 
tional servant. Two keep the peace with each other 
and their employer ; three begin a possible discord, 
which possibility increases with four, and becomes 
certain with five or six. Trained housekeepers, such 
as regulate the complicated establishments of the Old 
World, form a class that are not, and from the nature 
of the case never will be, found in any great numbers 
in this country. All such women, as a general thing, 
are keeping, and prefer to keep, houses of their own. 

A moderate style of housekeeping, small, compact, 
and simple domestic estabhshments, must necessarily 
be the general order of life in America. So many 
openings of profit are to be found in this country, that 
domestic service necessarily wants the permanence 
which forms so agreeable a feature of it in the Old 
World. 

This being the case, it should be an object in Amer- 
ica to exclude from the labors of the family all that 
can, with greater advantage, be executed out of it 
by combined labor. 

Formerly, in New England, soap and candles were 
to be made in each separate family; now, compara- 
tively few take this toil upon them. We buy soap of 
tlie soap-maker, and candles of the candle-factor. This 



Servants. 223 

principle might be extended much further. In France 
no family makes its own bread, and better bread can- 
not be eaten than what can be bought at the appro- 
priate shops. No family does its own washing, the 
family's linen is all sent to women who, making this 
their sole profession, get it up with a care and nicety 
which can seldom be equalled in any family. 

How would it simplify the burdens of the Ameri- 
can housekeeper to have washing and ironing day ex- 
punged from her calendar ! How much more neatly 
and compactly could the w^hole domestic system be 
arranged ! If all the money that each separate fam- 
ily spends on the outfit and accommodations for wash- 
ing and ironing, on fuel, soap, starch, and the other et 
ceteras, were united in a fund to create a laundry for 
every dozen families, one or two good women could 
do in first rate style what now is very indifferently 
done by the disturbance and disarrangement of all 
other domestic processes in these families. Whoever 
sets neighborhood laundries on foot will do much to 
solve the American housekeeper's hardest problem. 

Finally, American women must not try with three 
servants to carry on life in the style which in the Old 
World requires sixteen, — ■ they must thoroughly un- 
derstand, and be prepared to teach, every branch of 
housekeeping, — they must study to make domestic 
service desirable, by treating their servants in a way 



224 House and Home Papers, 

to lead them to respect themselves and to feel them- 
selves respected, — and there will gradually be evolved 
from the present confusion a solution of the domestic 
problem which shall be adapted to the life of a new 
and growing world. 



COOKERY. 

1\ /r Y wife and I were sitting at the open bow- 
•^^ -^ window of my study, watching the tuft of bright 
red leaves on our favorite maple, which warned us that 
summer was over. I was solacing myself, like all the 
world in our days, with reading the " Schcnberg Cotta 
Family," when my wife made her voice heard through 
the enchanted distance, and dispersed the pretty vision 
of German cottage-life. 

" Chris ! " 

"Well, my dear." 

" Do you know the day of the month ? " 

Now my wife knows this is a thing that I never do 
know, that I can't know, and, in fact, that there is no 
need I should trouble myself about, since she always 
knov/s, and what is more, always tells me. In fact, 
the question, when asked by her, meant more than 
met the ear. It was a delicate way of admonishing 
me that another paper for the " Atlantic " ought to be 
in train ; and so I answered, not to the external form, 
but to the internal intention. 



226 House and Home Papers, 

" Well, you see, my dear, I have n't made up my 
mind what my next paper shall be about." 
"Suppose, then, you let me give you a subject." 
'^ Sovereign lady, speak n ! Your slave hears ! " 
" Well, then, take Cookery. It may seem a vulgar 
subject, but I think more of health and happiness de- 
pends on that than on any other one thing. You may 
make houses enchantingly beautiful, hang them with 
pictures, have them clean and airy and convenient ; 
but if the stomach is fed with sour bread and burnt 
coffee, it will raise such rebellions that the eyes will 
see no beauty anywhere. Now in the little tour that 
you and I have been taking this summer, I have been 
thinking of the great abundance of splendid material 
we have in America, compared with the poor cooking. 
How often, in our stoppings, we have sat down to ta- 
bles loaded with material, originally of the very best 
kind, which had been so spoiled in the treatment that 
there was really nothing to eat ! Green biscuits with 
acrid spots of alkali, — sour yeast-bread, — meat slow- 
ly simmered in fat till it seemed like grease itself, and 
slowly congealing in cold grease, — and above all, that 
unpardonable enormity, strong butter ! How often I 
have longed to show people what might have been 
done with the raw material out of which all these mon- 
strosities were concocted ! " 

" My dear," said I, " you are driving me upon deli 



Cookery, 227 

cate ground. Would you have your husband appear 
in public with that most opprobrious badge of the do- 
mestic furies, a dishcloth pinned to his coat-tail ? It is 
coming to exactly the point I have always predicted, 
Mrs. Crowfield : you must write yourself I always 
told you that you could write far better than I, if you 
would only try. Only sit down and write as you 
sometimes talk to me, and I might hang up my pen 
by the side of * Uncle Ned's ' fiddle and bow." 

" O, nonsense ! " said my wife. " I never could 
write. I know what ought to be said, and I could 
say it to any one ; but my ideas freeze in the pen, 
cramp in my fingers, and make my brain seem like 
heavy bread. I was born for extemporary speaking. 
Besides, I think the best things on all subjects in this 
world of ours are said, not by the practical workers, 
but by the careful observers." 

*' Mrs. Crowfield, that remark is as good as if I had 
made it myself," said I. " It is true that I have been 
all my life a speculator and observer in all domestic 
matters, having them so confidentially under my eye 
in our own household ; and so, if I write on a pure 
woman's matter, it must be understood that I am only 
your pen and mouth-piece, — only giving tangible form 
to wisdom which I have derived from you." 

So down I sat and scribbled, while my sovereign 
ady quietly stitched by my side. And here I tell my 



228 House and Home Papers. 

reader that I write on such a subject under protest, — 
declaring again my conviction, that, if my wife only 
believed in herself is firmly as I do, she would write 
so that nobody would ever want to listen to me again. 

Cookery. 

We in America have the raw material of provision 
in greater abundance than any other nation. There 
is no country where an ample, well-furnished table is 
more easily spread, and for that reason, perhaps, none 
where the bounties of Providence are more generally 
neglected. I do not mean to say that the traveller 
through the length and breadth of our land could not, 
on the whole, find an average of comfortable subsist- 
ence ; yet, considering that our resources are greater 
than those of any other civihzed people, our results 
are comparatively poorer. 

It is said, that, a list of the summer vegetables which 
are exhibited on New York hotel-tables being shown 
to a French artiste^ he declared that to serve such a 
dinner properly would take till midnight. I recollect 
how I was once struck with our national plenteous- 
ness, on returning from a Continental tour, and going 
directly from the ship to a New York hotel, in the 
bounteous season of autumn. For months I had been 
habituated to my neat little bits of chop or poultry 
garnished with the inevitable cauliflower or potato, 



Cookery, 229 

which seemed to be the sole possibility after the reign 
of green-peas was over ; now I sat down all at once to 
a carnival of vegetables : ripe, juicy tomatoes, raw or 
cooked ; cucumbers in brittle slices ; rich, yellow 
sweet -potatoes ; broad Lima-beans, and beans of 
other and various names ; tempting ears of Indian- 
corn steaming in enormous piles, and great smoking 
tureens of the savory succotash, an Indian gift to the 
table for which civilization need not blush ; sliced egg- 
plant in delicate fritters ; and marrow-squashes, of 
creamy pulp and sweetness : a rich variety, embarrass- 
ing to the appetite, and perplexing to the choice. 
Verily, the thought has often impressed itself on my 
mind that the vegetarian doctrine preached in Amer- 
ica left a man quite as much as he had capacity to eat 
or enjoy, and that in the midst of such tantalizing 
abundance he really lost the apology which elsewhere 
bears him out in preying upon his less gifted and ac- 
complished animal neighbors. 

But with all this, the American table, taken as a 
whole, is inferior to that of England or France. It 
presents a fine abundance of material, carelessly and 
poorly treated. The management of food is nowhere 
in the world, perhaps, more slovenly and wasteful. 
Everything betokens that want of care that waits on 
abundance ; there are great capabilities and poor ex- 
ecution. A tourist through England can seldom fail. 



230 House and Home Papers, 

at the quietest country-inn, of finding himself served 
with the essentials of English table-comfort, — his 
mutton-chop done to a turn, his steaming little private 
apparatus for concocting his own tea, his choice pot 
of marmalade or slice of cold ham, and his delicate 
rolls and creamy butter, all serv^ed with care and neat- 
ness. In France, one never asks in vain for delicious 
cafe-au-laitj good bread and butter, a nice omelet, or 
some savory little portion of meat with a French name, 
But to a tourist taking like chance in American coun- 
try-fare, what is the prospect? What is the coffee? 
what the tea ? and the meat 1 and above all, the butter ? 

In lecturing on cookery, as on house-building, I 
divide the subject into not four, but five grand ele- 
ments : first. Bread ; second. Butter ; third, Meat ; 
fourth. Vegetables ; and fifth. Tea, — by which I mean, 
generically, all sorts of warm, comfortable drinks served 
out in teacups, whether they be called tea, coffee, 
chocolate, broma, or what not. 

I afl[irm, that, if these five departments are all per- 
fect, the great ends of domestic cookery are answered, 
so far as the comfort and well-being of life are con- 
cerned. I am aware that there exists another depart- 
ment, which is often regarded by culinary amateurs 
and young aspirants as the higher branch and very 
collegiate course of practical cookery ; to wit. Confec- 
tionery, by which I mean to designate all pleasing 



Cookery. 231 

and complicated compounds of sweets and spices, 
devised not for health and nourishment, and strongly- 
suspected of interfering with both, — mere tolerated 
gratifications of the palate, which we eat, not with 
the expectation of being benefited, but only with the 
hope of not being injured by them. In this large de- 
partment rank all sort of cakes, pies, preserves, ices, 
etc. I shall have a word or two to say under this 
head before I have done. I only remark now, that in 
my tours about the country I have often had a virulent 
ill-will excited towards these works of culinary super- 
erogation, because I thought their excellence was at- 
tained by treading under foot and disregarding the 
five grand essentials. I have sat at many a table gar- 
nished with three or four kinds of well-made cake, 
compounded with citron and spices and all imaginable 
good things, wher^ the meat was tough and greasy, 
the bread some hot preparation of flour, lard, saleratus, 
and acid, and the butter unutterably detestable. At 
such tables I have thought, that, if the mistress of 
the feast had given the care, time, and labor to pre- 
paring the simple items of bread, butter, and meat, that 
she evidently had given to the preparation of these 
extras, the lot of a traveller might be much more com- 
fortable. Evidently, she never had thought of these 
common articles as constituting a good table. So 
long as she had puff pastry, rich black cake, clear 



232 House and Home Papers, 

jelly, and preserves, she seemed to consider that such 
unimportant matters as bread, butter, and meat could 
take care of themselves. It is the same inattention 
to common things as that which leads people to build 
houses with stone fronts and window-caps and expen- 
sive front-door trimmings, without bathing-rooms or 
fireplaces or ventilators. 

Those who go into the country looking for summer 
board in farm-houses know perfectly well that a table 
where the butter is always fresh, the tea and coffee of 
the best kinds and well made, and the meats properly 
kept, dressed, and served, is the one table of a hun- 
dred, the fabulous enchanted island. It seems impos- 
sible to get the idea into the minds of people that 
w^hat is called common food, carefully prepared, be- 
comes, in virtue of that very care and attention, a del- 
icacy, superseding the necessity of artificially com- 
pounded dainties. 

To begin, then, with the very foundation of a good 
table, — Bread: What ought it to be? It should be 
light, sweet, and tender. 

This matter of lightness is the distinctive line be- 
tween savage and civilized bread. The savage mixes 
simple flour and water into balls of paste, which he 
throws into boiling water, and which come out solid, 
glutinous masses, of which his common saying is, 
" Man eat dis, he no die," — which a facetious trav- 



Cookery. 233 

eller who was obliged to subsist on it interpreted to 
mean, " Dis no kill you, nothing will." In short, it 
requires the stomach of a wild animal or of a savage 
to digest this primitive form of bread, and of course 
more or less attention in all civilized modes of bread- 
making is given to producing lightness. By lightness 
is meant simply that the particles are to be separated 
from each other by little holes or air-cells ; and all the 
different methods of making light bread are neither 
more nor less than the formation in bread of these air- 
cells. 

So far as we know, there are four practicable meth- 
ods of aerating bread ; namely, by fermentation, — 
by effervescence of an acid and an alkali, — by aerated 
egg, or egg which has been filled with air by the pro- 
cess of beating, — and lastly, by pressure of some 
gaseous substance into the paste, by a process much 
resembling the impregnation of water in a soda-foun- 
tain. All these have one and the same object, — to 
give us the cooked particles of our flour separated by 
such permanent air-cells as will enable the stomach 
more readily to digest them. 

A very common mode of aerating bread, in Amer- 
ica, is by the effervescence of an acid and an alkali 
in the flour. The carbonic acid gas thus formed 
produces minute air-cells in the bread, or, as the cook 
says, makes it light. When this process is performed 



234 House and Home Papers, 

with exact attention to chemical laws, so that the acid 
and alkali completely neutralize each other, leaving 
no overplus of either, the result is often very pala- 
table. The difficulty is, that this is a happy con- 
junction of circumstances which seldom occurs. The 
acid most commonly employed is that of sour milk, 
and, as milk has many degrees of sourness, the rule 
of a certain quantity of alkali to the pint must neces- 
sarily produce very different results at different times. 
As an actual fact, where this mode of making bread 
prevails, as we lament to say it does to a great extent 
in this country, one finds five cases of failure to one 
of success. It is a woful thing that the daughters 
of New England have abandoned the old respectable 
mode of yeast-brewing and bread-raising for this spe- 
cious substitute, so easily made, and so seldom well 
made. The green, clammy, acrid substance, called 
biscuit, which many of our worthy republicans are 
obliged to eat in these days, is wholly unworthy of 
the men and women of the Republic. Good patriots 
ought not to be put off in that way, — they deserve 
better fare. 

As an occasional variety, as a household conven- 
ience for obtaining bread or biscuit at a moment's 
notice, the process of effervescence may be retained ; 
but we earnestly entreat American housekeepers, in 
Scriptural language, to stand in the way and ask 



Cookery. 235 

for the old paths, and return to the good yeast-bread 
of their sainted grandmothers. 

If acid and alkali must be used, by all means let 
them be mixed in due proportions. No cook should 
be left to guess and judge for herself about this mat- 
ter. There is an article, called " Preston's Infallible 
Yeast-Powder," which is made by chemical rule, and 
produces very perfect results. The use of this obvi- 
ates the worst dangers in making bread by efferves- 
cence. 

Of all processes of aeration in bread-making, the 
oldest and most time-honored is by fermentation. 
That this was known in the days of our Saviour is 
evident from the forcible simile in which he compares 
the silent permeating force of truth in human society 
to the very familiar household process of raising bread 
by a little yeast. 

There is, however, one species of yeast, much used 
in some parts of the country, against which I have to 
enter my protest. It is called salt-risings, or milk- 
risings, and is made by mixing flour, milk, and a 
little salt together, and leaving them to ferment. The 
bread thus produced is often very attractive, when 
new and made with great care. It is white and deli- 
cate, with fine, even air-cells. It has^ however, when 
kept, some characteristics which remind us of the 
terms in which our old English Bible describes the 



236 House and Home Papers, 

effect of keeping the manna of the ancient Israelite::,, 
which we are informed, in words more explicit than 
agreeable, " stank, and bred worms." If salt-rising 
bread does not fulfil the whole of this unpleasant 
description, it certainly does emphatically a part of 
it. The smell which it has in baking, and when more 
than a day old, suggests the inquiry, whether it is the 
saccharine or the putrid fermentation with which it is 
raised. \Vhoever breaks a piece of it after a day or 
two will often see minute filaments or clammy strings 
drawing out from the fragments, which, with the un- 
mistakable smell, will cause him to pause before 
consummating a nearer acquaintance. 

The fermentation of flour by means of brewer's or 
distiller's yeast produces, if rightly managed, results 
far more palatable and wholesome. The only requi- 
sites for success in it are, first, good materials, and, 
second, great care in a few small things. There are 
certain low-priced or damaged kinds of flour which 
can never by an 1 kind of domestic chemistry be made 
into good bread ; and to those persons whose stom- 
achs forbid them to eat gummy, glutinous paste, under 
the name of bread, there is no economy in buying 
these poor brands, even at half the price of good flour. 

But good flour and good yeast being supposed, with 
a temperature favorable to the development of fermen- 
tation, the whole success of the process depends on 



Cookery, 237 

the thorough diffusion of the proper proportion of 
yeast through the whole mass, and on stopping the 
subsequent fermentation at the precise and fortunate 
point. The true housewife makes her bread the sov- 
ereign of her kitchen, — its behests must be attended 
to in all critical points and moments, no matter what 
else be postponed. She who attends to her bread 
when she has done this, and arranged that, and per- 
formed the other, very often finds that the forces of 
nature will not wait for her. The snowy mass^ per- 
fectly mixed, kneaded with care and strength, rises 
in its beautiful perfection till the moment comes for 
fixing the air-cells by baking. A few minutes now, 
and the acetous fermentation will begin, and the whole 
result be spoiled. Many bread-makers pass in utter 
carelessness over this sacred and mysterious boun- 
dary. Their oven has cake in it, or they are skim- 
ming jelly, or attending to some other of the so-called 
higher branches of cookery, while the bread is quickly 
passing into the acetous stage. At last, when they 
are ready to attend to it, they find that it has been 
going its own way, — it is so sour that the pungent 
smell is plainly perceptible. Now the saleratus-boitle 
is handed down, and a quantity of the dissolved alkali 
mixed with the paste, — an expedient sometimes rrsak- 
ing itself too manifest by greenish streaks or small 
acrid spots vn the bread. As the result, we have a 



238 House and Home Papers, 

beautiful article spoiled, — bread without sweetness, 
if not absolutely sour. 

In the view of many, lightness is the only property 
required in this article. The delicate, refined sweet- 
ness which exists in carefully kneaded bread, baked 
just before it passes to the extreme point of fermen- 
tation, is something of which they have no conception j 
and thus they will even regard this process of spoiling 
the paste by the acetous fermentation, and then rec- 
tifying that acid by effervescence with an alkali, as 
something positively meritorious. How else can they 
value and relish bakers' loaves, such as some are, 
drugged with ammonia and other disagreeable things, 
light indeed, so light that they seem to have neither 
weight nor substance, but with no more sweetness or 
taste than so much white cotton ? 

Some persons prepare bread for the oven by sim- 
ply mixing it in the mass, without kneading, pouring it 
into pans, and suffering it to rise there. The air-cells 
in bread thus prepared are coarse and uneven ; the 
bread is as inferior in delicacy and nicety to that 
which is well kneaded as a raw Irish servant to a 
perfectly educated and refined lady. The process of 
kneading seems to impart an evenness to the minute 
air-cells, a fineness of texture, and a tenderness and 
pliability to the whole substance, that can be gained 
in no other way. 



Cookery. 239 

The divine principle of beauty has its reign over 
Dread as well as over all other things ; it has its laws 
of aesthetics ; and that bread which is so prepared 
that it can be formed into separate and well-propor- 
tioned loaves, each one carefully worked and mould- 
ed, will develop the most beautiful results. After 
being moulded, the loaves should stand a little while, 
just long enough to allow the fermentation going on 
in them to expand each little air-cell to the point at 
which it stood before it was worked down, and then 
they should be immediately put into the oven. 

Many a good thing, however, is spoiled in the oven. 
We cannot but regret, for the sake of bread, that our 
old steady brick ovens have been almost universally 
superseded by those of ranges and cooking-stoves, 
which are infinite in their caprices, and forbid all 
general rules. One thing, however, may be borne in 
mind as a principle, — that the excellence of bread in 
all its varieties, plain or sweetened, depends on the 
perfection of its air-cells, whether produced by yeast, 
^gg^ or effervescence ; that one of the objects of baking 
is to fix these air-cells, and that the quicker this can 
be done through the whole mass, the better will the 
result be. When cake or bread is made heavy by 
baking too quickly, it is because the immediate for- 
mation of the top crust hinders the exhaling of the 
moisture in the centre, and prevents the air-cells from 



240 House and Home Papers, 

cooking. The weight also of the crust pressing down 
on the doughy air-cells below destroys them, pro- 
ducing that horror of good cooks, a heavy streak. 
The problem in baking, then, is the quick application 
of heat rather below than above the loaf, and its 
steady continuance till all the air-cells are thoroughly 
dried into permanent consistency. Every housewife 
must watch her own oven to know how this can be 
best accomplished. 

Bread-making can be cultivated to any extent as a 
fine art, — and the various kinds of biscuit, tea-rusks, 
twists, rolls, into which bread may be made, are much 
better worth a housekeeper's ambition than the get- 
ting up of rich and expensive cake or confections. 
There are also varieties of material which are rich 
in good effects. Unbolted flour, altogether more 
wholesome than the fine wheat, and when properly 
prepared more palatable, — rye-flour and corn-meal, 
each affording a thousand attractive possibilities, — 
each and all of these come under the general laws 
of bread-stuffs, and are worth a careful attention. 

A peculiarit}^ of our American table, particularly 
in 'he Southern and Western States, is the constant 
exhibition of various preparations of hot bread. In 
maiiy families of the South and West, bread in loaves 
to be eaten cold is an article quite unknown. The 
effect of this kind of diet upon the health has formed 



Cookery, 241 

a frequent subject of remark among travellers ; but 
only those know the full mischiefs of it who have 
been compelled to sojourn for a length of time in 
families where it is maintained. The unknown hor- 
rors of dyspepsia from bad bread are a topic over 
which we willingly draw a veil. 

NcKt to Bread comes Butter^ — on which we have 
to say, that, when we remember what butter is in 
civilized Europe, and compare it with what it is in 
America, we wonder at the forbearance and lenity 
of travellers in their strictures on our national com- 
missariat. 

Butter, in England, France, and Italy, is simply 
solidified cream, with all the sweetness of the cream 
in its taste, freshly churned each day, and unadul- 
terated by salt. At the present moment, when salt 
is five cents a pound and butter fifty, we Americans 
are paying, I should judge from the taste, for about 
one pound of salt to every ten of butter, and those 
of us who have eaten the butter of France and Eng- 
land do this with rueful recollections. 

There is, it is true, an article of butter made in the 
American style with salt, which, in its own kind and 
way, has a merit not inferior to that of England and 
France. Many prefer it, and it certainly takes a rank 
equally respectable with the other. It is yellow, hard, 



242 House and Home Papers, 

and worked so perfectly free from every particle of 
buttermilk that it might make the voyage of the world 
without spoiling. It is salted, but salted with care 
and delicacy, so that it may be a question whether 
even a fastidious Englishman m.ight not prefer its 
golden solidity to the white, creamy freshness of his 
own. Now I am not for universal imitation of foreign 
customs, and where I find this butter made perfectly, 
I call it our American style, and am not ashamed 
of it. I only regret that this article is the excep- 
tion, and not the rule, on our tables. When I re- 
flect on the possibilities which beset the delicate, 
stomach in this line, I do not wonder that my ven- 
erated friend Dr. Mussey used to close his counsels 
to invalids with the direction, "And don't eat grease 
on your bread." 

America must, I think, have the credit of manu- 
facturing and putting into market more bad butter 
than all that is made in all the rest of the world to- 
gether. The varieties of bad tastes and smells which 
prevail in it are quite a study. This has a cheesy 
taste, that a mouldy, — this is flavored with cabbage, 
and that again with turnip, and another has the strong 
sharp savor of rancid animal fat. These varieties, I 
presume, come from the practice of churning only at 
long intervals, and keeping the cream meanwhile in 
anventilated cellars or dairies, the air of which is 



Cookery, 243 

loaded with die effluvia of vegetable substances. No 
domestic articles are so sympathetic as those of the 
milk tribe : they readily take on the smell and taste 
of any neighboring substance, and hence the infinite 
variety of flavors on which one mournfully muses who 
has late in autumn to taste twenty firk^'ns of butter in 
hopes of finding one which will simply not be intol- 
erable on his winter table. 

A matter for despair as regards bad butter is that 
at the tables where it is used it stands sentinel at the 
door to bar your way to every other kind of food. 
You turn from your dreadful half-slice of bread, which 
fills your mouth with bitterness, to your beef-steak, 
which proves virulent with the same poison ; you 
think to take refuge in vegetable diet, and find the 
butter in the string-beans, and polluting the innocence 
of early peas, — it is in the corn, in the succotash, in 
the squash, — the beets swim in it, the onions have 
it poured over them. Hungry and miserable, you 
think to solace yourself at the dessert, — but the 
pastry is cursed, the cake is acrid with the same 
plague. You are ready to howl with despair, and 
your misery is great upon you, — especially if this is 
a table where you have taken board for three months 
with your delicate wife and four small children. Your 
case is dreadful, — and it is hopeless, because long 
usage and habit have rendered your host perfectly 



244 House and Home Papers. 

incapable of discovering what is the matter. " Don't 
like the butter, Sir? I assure you I paid an extra 
price for it, and it 's the very best in the market. I 
looked over as many as a hundred tubs, and picked 
out this one." You are dumb, but not less despair- 
ing. 

Yet the process of making^ good butter is a very 
simple one. To keep the cream in a perfectly pure, 
cool atmosphere, to churn while it is yet sweet, to 
work out the buttermilk thoroughly, and to add salt 
with such discretion as not to ruin the fine, delicate 
flavor of the fresh cream, — all this is quite simple, 
so simple that one wonders at thousands and millions 
of pounds of butter yearly manufactured which are 
merely a hobgoblin-bewitchment of cream into foul 
and loathsome poisons. 

The third head of my discourse is that of Meat, 
of which America furnishes, in the gross material, 
enough to spread our tables royally, v/ere it well 
cared for and served. 

The faults in the meat generally furnished to us 
are, first, that it is too new. A beefsteak, which three 
or four days of keeping might render practicable, is 
served up to us palpitating with freshness, with all the 
toughness of animal muscie yet warm. In the West- 
em country, the traveller, on approaching an hotel. 



Cookery. 245 

is often saluted by the last shrieks of the chickens 
which half an hour afterward are presented to him 
a la spread-eagle for his dinner. The example of 
the Father of the Faithful, most wholesome to be 
followed in so many respects, is imitated only in the 
celerity with which the young calf, tender and good, 
was transformed into an edible dish for hospitable 
purposes. But what might be good housekeeping in 
a nomadic Emir, in days when refrigerators were yet 
in the future, ought not to be so closely imitated as 
it often is in our own land. 

In the next place, there is a woful lack of nicety in 
the butcher's work of cutting and preparing meat. 
Who that remembers the neatly trimmed mutton-chop 
of an English inn, or the artistic little circle of lamb- 
chop fried in bread-crumbs coiled around a tempting 
centre of spinach which can always be found in 
France, can recognize any family-resemblance to these 
dapper civilized preparations in those coarse, roughly 
hacked strips of bone, gristle, and meat which are 
commonly called mutton-chop in America ? There 
seems to be a large dish of something resembling 
meat, in which each fragment has about two or three 
edible morsels, the rest being composed of dry and 
burnt skin, fat, and ragged bone. 

Is it not time that civilization should learn to de- 
mand somewhat more care and nicety in the modes 



246 House and Home Papers. 

of preparing what is to be cooked and eaten ? Might 
not some of the refinement and trimness which char- 
acterize the preparations of the European market be 
with advantage introduced into our own ? The house- 
keeper who wishes to garnish her table with some 
of those nice things is stopped in the outset by the 
butcher. Except in our large cities, where some for- 
eign travel may have created the demand, it seems 
impossible to get much in this line that is properly 
prepared. 

I am aware, that, if this is urged on the score of 
aesthetics, the ready reply will be, " O, we can't give 
time here in America to go into niceties and French 
whim-whams ! " But the French mode of doing almost 
all practical things is based on that true philosophy 
and utilitarian good sense which characterize that 
seemingly thoughtless people. Nowhere is economy 
a more careful study, and their market is artistically 
arranged to this end. The rule is so to cut their 
meats that no portion designed to be cooked in a 
certain manner shall have wasteful appendages which 
that mode of cooking will spoil. The French soup- 
kettle stands ever ready to receive the bones, the 
thin fibrous flaps, the sinewy and gristly portions, 
which are so often included irx our roasts or broil- 
ings, which fill our plates with unsightly debris^ and 
finally make an amcunt of blank waste for which we 



Cookery, 247 

pay our butcher the same price that we pay for what 
we have eaten. 

The dead waste of our clumsy, coarse way of cut- 
ting meats is immense. For example, at the begin- 
ning of the present season, the part of a lamb denom- 
inated leg and loin, or hind-quarter, sold for thirty 
cents a pound. Now this includes, besides the thick^ 
fleshy portions, a quantity of bone, sinew, and thin 
fibrous substance, constituting full one third of ths 
whole weight. If we put it into the oven entire, in 
the usual manner, we have the thin parts overdone, 
and the skinny and fibrous parts utterly dried up, by 
the application of the amount of heat necessary to 
cook the thick portion. Supposing the joint to weigh 
six pounds, at thirty cents, and that one third of the 
weight is so treated as to become perfectly useless, 
we throw away sixty cents. Of a piece of beef at 
twenty-five cents a pound, fifty cents' worth is often 
lost in bone, fat, and burnt skin. 

The fact is, this way of selling and cooking meat 
in large, gross portions is of English origin, and be- 
longs to a country where all the customs of society 
spring from a class who have no particular occasion 
for economy. The practice of minute and delicate 
division comes from a nation which acknowledges 
the need of economy, and has made it a study. A 
quarter of lamb in this mode of division would be 



248 House and Home Papers. 

sold in three nicely prepared portions. The thick 
part would be sold by itself, for a neat, compact- 
little roast ; the rib-bones would be artistically sep- 
arated, and all the edible matters scraped away would 
form those delicate dishes of lamb-chop, which, fried 
in bread-crumbs to a golden brown, are so orna- 
mental and so palatable a side-dish ; the trimmings 
which remain after this division would be destined 
to the soup-kettle or stew-pan. In a French market 
is a little portion for every purse, and the far-famed 
and delicately flavored soups and stews which have 
arisen out of French economy are a study worth a 
housekeeper's attention. Not one atom of food is 
wasted in the French modes of preparation ; even 
tough animal cartilages and sinews, instead of appear- 
ing burned and blackened in company with the roast 
meat to which they happen to be related, are treated 
according to their own laws, and come out either in 
savory soups, or those fine, clear meat-jellies which 
form a garnish no less agreeable to the eye than pal- 
atable to the taste. 

Whether this careful, economical, practical style of 
meat-cooking can ever to any great extent be intro- 
duced into our kitchens now is a question. Oui 
butchers are against it ; our servants are wedded to 
the old wholesale wasteful ways, which seem to them 
easier because they are accustomed to them. A cook 



Cookery. 249 

who will keep and properly tend a soup-kettle which 
shall receive and utilize all that the coarse preparations 
of the butcher would require her to trim away, who 
understands the art of making the most of all these 
remains, is a treasure scarcely to be hoped for. If 
such things are to be done, it must be primarily through 
the educated brain of cultivated women who do not 
scorn to turn their culture and refinement upon do- 
mestic problems. 

When meats have been properly divided, so that 
each portion can receive its own appropriate style of 
treatment, next comes the consideration of the modes 
of cooking. These may be divided into two great 
general classes : those where it is desired to keep the 
juices within the meat, as in baking, broiling, and fry- 
ing, — and those whose object is to extract the juice 
and dissolve the fibre, as in the making of soups and 
stews. In the first class of operations, the process 
must be as rapid as may consist with the thorough 
cooking of all the particles. In this branch of cook- 
ery, doing quickly is doing well. The fire must be 
brisk, the attention alert. The introduction of cook- 
ing-stoves ofi'ers to careless domestics facilities foi 
gradually drying-up meats, and despoiling them of all 
flavor and nutriment, — facilities which appear to be 
very generally laid hold of They have almost ban- 
ished the genuine, old-fashioned roast-meat from oui 



250 House and Home Papers. 

tables, and left in its stead dried meats with their 
most precious and nutritive juices evaporated. How 
few cooks, unassisted, are competent to the simple 
process of broiling a beefsteak or mutton-chop ! how 
very generally one has to choose between these meats 
gradually dried away, or burned on the outside and 
raw within ! Yet in England these articles never come 
on table done amiss ; their perfect cooking is as abso- 
lute a certainty as the rising of the sun. 

No one of these rapid processes of cooking, however, 
is so generally abused as frying. The frying-pan has 
awful sins to answer for. AVhat untold horrors of dys- 
pepsia have arisen from its smoky depths, like the 
ghosts from witches' caldrons ! The fizzle of frying 
meat is as a warning knell on many an ear, saying, 
" Touch not, taste not, if you would not burn and 
writhe ! " 

Yet those w^ho have travelled abroad remember 
that some of the lightest, most palatable, and most 
digestible preparations of meat have come from this 
dangerous source. But we fancy quite other rites and 
ceremonies inaugurated the process, and quite other 
hands performed its offices, than those known to our 
kitchens. Probably the delicate cbtelettes of France 
are not flopped down into half-melted grease, there 
gradually to warm and soak and ^zA^^ while Biddy 
goes in and out on her other ministrations, till finally. 



Cookery. 25 1 

when thoroughly saturated, and dinner-hour impends, 
she bethinks herself, and crowds the fire below to a 
roaring heat, and finishes the process by a smart burn, 
involving the kitchen and surrounding precincts in 
volumes of Stygian gloom. 

From such preparations has arisen the very cur- 
rent medical opinion that fried meats are indigest- 
ible. They are indigestible, if they are greasy ; 
but French cooks have taught us that a thing has 
no more need to be greasy because emerging from 
grease than Venus had to be salt because she rose 
from the sea. 

There are two ways of frying employed by the French 
cook. One is, to immerse the article to be cooked in 
boiling fat, with an emphasis on the present participle, 
— and the philosophical principle is, so immediately 
to crisp every pore, at the first moment or two of im- 
mersion, as effectually to seal the interior against 
the intrusion of greasy particles ; it can then remain 
as long as may be necessary thoroughly to cook it, 
without imbibing any more of the boiling fluid than if 
it were inclosed in an egg-shell. The other method is 
to rub a perfectly smooth iron surface with just enough 
of some oily substance to prevent the meat from ad- 
hering, and cook it with a quick heat, as cakes are 
baked on a griddle. In both these cases there must 
be the most rapid application of heat that can be made 



252 House and Home Papers, 

without burning, and by the adroitness shown in work 
ing out this problem the skill of the cook is tested. 
Any one whose cook attains this important secret will 
find fried things quite as digestible and often more 
palatable than any other. 

In the second department of meat-cookery, to wit, 
the slow and gradual application of heat for the soft- 
ening and dissolution of its fibre and the extraction 
of its juices, common cooks are equally untrained. 
Where is the so-called cook who understands how to 
prepare soups and stews? These are precisely the 
articles in which a French kitchen excels. The soup- 
kettle, made with a double bottom, to prevent burn- 
ing, is a permanent, ever-present institution, and the 
coarsest and most impracticable meats distilled through 
that alembic come out again in soups, jellies, or sa- 
vory stews. The toughest cartilage, even the bones, 
being first cracked, are here made to give forth their 
hidden virtues, and to rise in delicate and appetizing 
forms. One great law governs all these preparations : 
the application of heat must be gradual, steady, long 
protracted, never reaching the point of active boiling. 
Hours of quiet simmering dissolve all dissoluble parts, 
soften the sternest fibre, and unlock ever}^ minute cell 
in wliich Nature has stored away her treasures of nour- 
ishment. This careful and protracted apphcation of 
heat and the skilful use of flavors constitute the two 



Cookery, 253 

main points in all those nice preparations of meat for 
which the French have so many names, — processes 
by which a delicacy can be imparted to the coarsest 
and cheapest food superior to that of the finest articles 
under less philosophic treatment. 

French soups and stews are a study, — and they 
would not be an unprofitable one to any person who 
wishes to live with comfort and even elegance on small 
means. 

John Bull looks down from the sublime of ten thou- 
sand a year on French kickshaws, as he calls them : 
— " Give me my meat cooked so I may know what it 
is ! " An ox roasted whole is dear to John's soul, and 
his kitchen-arrangements are Titanic. What magnif- 
icent rounds and sirloins of beef, revolving on self- 
regulating spits, with a rich click of satisfaction, be- 
fore grates piled with roaring fires ! Let us do jus- 
tice to the royal cheer. Nowhere are the charms of 
pure, unadulterated animal food set forth in more 
imposing style. For John is rich, and what does he 
care for odds and ends and parings ? Has he not all 
the beasts of the forest, and the cattle on a thousand 
hills ? What does he want of economy .? But his 
brother Jean has not ten thousand pounds a year, — 
nothing like it ; but he makes up for the slenderness 
of his purse by boundless fertility of invention and del- 
icacy of practice. John began sneering at Jean's 



254 House and Home Papers. 

soups and ragouts, but all John's modern sons and 
daughters send to Jean for their cooks, and the su:- 
loins of England rise up and do obeisance to this 
Joseph with a white apron who comes to rule in their 
kitchens. 

There is no animal fibre that will not yield itself 
up to long-continued, steady heat. But the difficulty 
with almost any of the common ser\^ants who call 
themselves cooks is, that they have not the smallest 
notion of the philosophy of the application of heat. 
Such a one will complacently tell you concerning 
certain meats, that the harder you boil them the 
harder they grow, — an obvious fact, which, under 
her mode of treatment, by an indiscriminate gallop- 
ing boil, has frequently come under her personal 
observation. If you tell her that such meat must 
stand for six hours in a heat just below the boiling- 
point, she will probably answer, " Yes, Ma'am," and 
go on her own way. Or she will let it stand till it 
burns to the bottom of the kettle, — a most common 
termination of the experiment. The only way to 
make sure of the matter is either to import a French 
kettle, or to fit into an ordinary kettle a false bottom, 
such as any tinman may make, that shall leave a 
space of an inch or t^vo between the meat and the 
fire. This kettle may be maintained as a constant 
habitue of the range, and into it the cook may be 



Cookery. 255 

instructed to throw all the fibrous trimmings of meat, 
all the gristle, tendons, and bones, having previously 
broken up these last with a mallet. 

Such a kettle will furnish the basis for clear, rich 
soups or other palatable dishes. Clear soup consists 
of the dissolved juices of the meat and gelatine of 
the bones, cleared from the fat and fibrous portions 
by straining when cold. The grease, which rises to 
the top of the fluid, may thus be easily removed. In 
a stew, on the contrary, you boil down this soup till 
it permeates the fibre which long exposure to heat 
has softened. All that remains, after the proper 
preparation of the fibre and juices, is the flavor- 
ing, and it is in this, particularly, that French soups 
excel those of America and England and all the 
world. 

English and American soups are often heavy and 
hot with spices. There are appreciable tastes in 
them. They burn your mouth wdth cayenne or clove 
or allspice. You can tell at once what is in them, 
oftentimes to your sorrow. But a French soup has 
a flavor which one recognizes at once as delicious, 
yet not to be characterized as due to any single 
condiment ; it is the just blending of many things. 
The same remark applies to all their stews, ragouts, 
and other delicate preparations. No cook will evet 
study these flavors ; but perhaps many cooks' mis- 



2^6 House a7id Home Papers, 

tresses may, and thus be able to impart delicacy 
and comfort to economy. 

As to those things called hashes, commonly man- 
ufactured by unwatched, untaught cooks, out of the 
remains of yesterday's repast, let us not dwell too 
closely on their memory, — compounds of meat, gris 
tie, skin, fat, and burnt fibre, with a handful of 
pepper and salt flung at them, dredged with lumpy 
flour, watered from the spout of the tea-kettle, and 
left to simmer at the cook's convenience while she 
is other\vise occupied. Such are the best perform- 
ances a housekeeper can hope for from an untrained 
cook. 

But the cunningly devised minces, the artful prep- 
arations choicely flavored, which may be made of 
yesterday's repast, — by these is the true domestic 
artist known. No cook untaught by an educated 
brain ever makes these, and yet economy is a great 
gainer by them. 

As regards the department of Vegetables^ their num- 
ber and variety in America are so great that a table 
might almost be furnished by these alone. Generally 
speaking, their cooking is a more simple art, and 
therefore more likely to be found satisfactorily per- 
formed, than that of meats. If only they are not 
drenched with rancid butter, their own native excel- 



Cookery. 257 

lence makes itself known in most of the ordinary 
modes of preparation. 

There is, however, one exception. 

Our stanch old friend, the potato, is to other vege- 
tables what bread is on the table. Like bread, it is 
held as a sort of sine-qua-7ion ; like that, it may be 
made invariably palatable by a little care in a few 
plain particulars, through neglect of which it often 
becomes intolerable. The soggy, waxy, indigestible 
viand that often appears in the potato-dish is a down- 
right sacrifice of the better nature of this vegetable. 

The potato, nutritive and harmless as it appears, 
belongs to a family suspected of very dangerous traits. 
It is a family-connection of the deadly-nightshade and 
other ill-reputed gentry, and sometimes shows strange 
proclivities to evil, — now breaking out uproariously, 
as in the noted potato-rot, and now more covertly, 
in various evil affections. For this reason scientific 
directors bid us beware of the water in which pota- 
toes are boiled, — into which, it appears, the evil 
principle is drawn off; and they caution us not to 
shred them into stews without pre^dously suffering 
the slices to lie for an hour or so in salt and water. 
These cautions are worth attention. 

The most usual modes of preparing the potato for 
the table are by roasting or boiling. These processes 
are so simple that it is commonly supposed every 

Q 



258 House and Home Papers, 

cook understands them without special directions ; 
and yet there is scarcely an uninstructed cook who 
can boil or roast a potato. 

A good roasted potato is a delicacy worth a dozen 
compositions of the cook-book \ yet when we ask for 
it, what burnt, shrivelled abortions are presented to 
us ! Biddy rushes to her potato-basket and pours 
out two dozen of different sizes, some having in them 
three times the amount of matter of others. These 
being washed, she tumbles them into her oven at a 
leisure interval, and there lets them lie till it is time 
to serve breakfast, whenever that may be. As a 
result, if the largest are cooked, the smallest are 
presented in cinders, and the intermediate sizes are 
withered and watery. Nothing is so utterly ruined 
by a few moments of overdoing. That which at the 
right moment was plump with mealy richness, a quar- 
ter of an hour later shrivels and becomes watery, — 
and it is in this state that roast potatoes are most 
frequently served. 

In the same manner we have seen boiled potatoes 
from an untaught cook coming upon the table like 
lumps of yellow wax, — and the same article, the day 
after, under the directions of a skilful mistress, ap- 
pearing in snowy balls of powdery lightness. In the 
one case, they were thrown in their skins into water 
and suffered to soak or boil, as the case might be, a* 



Cookery, 259 

the cook's leisure, and after they were boiled to stand 
in the water till she was ready to peel them. In the 
other case, the potatoes being first peeled were boiled 
as quickly as possible in salted water, which the mo- 
ment they were done was drained off, and then they 
were gently shaken for a minute or two over the fire 
to dry them still more thoroughly. We have never 
yet seen the potato so depraved and given over to 
evil that could not be reclaimed by this mode of 
treatment. 

As to fried potatoes, who that remembers the crisp, 
golden slices of the French restaurant, thin as wafers 
and light as snow-flakes, does not speak respectfully 
of them ? What cousinship with these have those 
coarse, greasy masses of sliced potato, wholly soggy 
and partly burnt, to which we are treated under the 
name of fried potatoes cL la America ? In our cities 
the restaurants are introducing the French article to 
great acceptance, and to the vindication of the fair 
fame of this queen of vegetables. 

Finally, I arrive at the last great head of my 
subject, to wit. Tea, — meaning thereby, as before 
observed, what our Hibernian friend did in the in- 
quiry, "Will y'r Honor take Uay tay' or cofifee 
tay?" 

I am not about to enter into the merits of the 



26o House and Home Papers, 

great tea-and-coffee controversy, or say whether these 
substances are or are not ^vholesome. I treat of 
them as actual existences, and speak only of the 
modes of making the most of them. 

The French coffee is reputed the best in the world ; 
and a thousand voices have asked, What is it about 
the French coffee ? 

In the first place, then, the French coffee is coffee, 
and not chiccory, or rye, or beans, or peas. In the 
second place, it is freshly roasted, whenever made, — 
roasted with great care and evenness in a little revolv- 
ing cylinder which makes part of the furniture of every 
kitchen, and which keeps in the aroma of the berry. 
It is never overdone, so as to destroy the coffee-flavor, 
which is in nine cases out of ten the fault of the coffee 
we meet with. Then it is ground, and placed in a 
coffee-pot with a filter, through which it percolates in 
clear drops, the coffee-pot standing on a heated stove to 
maintain the temperature. The nose of the coffee-pot 
is stopped up to prevent the escape of the aroma during 
this process. The extract thus obtained is a perfectly 
clear, dark fluid, known as cafe ?ioir, or black coffee. 
It is black only because of its strength, being in fact 
rlmost the very essential oil of couee. A table-spoon- 
ful of this in boiled milk would make what is ordi- 
narily called a strong cup of coffee. The boiled milk 
is prepared with no less care. It must be fresh and 



Cookery, 261 

new, not merely warmed or even brought to the boil 
ing-point, but slowly simmered till it attains a thick, 
creamy richness. The coffee mixed with this, and 
sweetened with that sparkling beet-root sugar which 
ornaments a French table, is the celebrated cafe-au- 
laiij the name of which has gone round the world. 

As we look to France for the best coffee, so we 
must look to England for the perfection of tea. The 
tea-kettle is as much an English institution as aris- 
tocracy or the Prayer-Book ; and when one wants to 
know exactly how tea should be made, one has only 
to ask how a fine old English housekeeper makes it. 

The first article of her faith is that the water must 
not merely be hot, not merely have boiled a few mo- 
ments since, but be actually boiling at the moment it 
touches the tea. Hence, though servants in Eng- 
land are vastly better trained than with us, this deli- 
cate mystery is seldom left to their hands. Tea-mak- 
ing belongs to the drawing-room, and high-born ladies 
preside at " the bubbling and loud-hissing urn,'' and 
see that all due rites and solemnities are properly 
performed, — ^that the cups are hot, and that the in- 
fused tea waits the exact time before the libations 
commence. O, ye dear old English tea-tables, resorts 
of the kindest-hearted hospitality in the world ! we 
still cherish your memory, even though you do not 
say pleasant things of us there. One of these days 



«62 House and Home Papers. 

you will think better of us. Of late, the introduction 
of English breakfast-tea has raised a new sect among 
^he tea-drinkers, reversing some of the old canons. 
"Bi'eakfast-tea must be boiled ! Unlike the delicate 
aiticle of olden time, which required only a momen- 
tary infusion to develop its richness, this requires a 
longer and severer treatment to bring out its strength, 
— ihu3 confusing all the established usages^ and 
tbro^og^ tht work into the hands of the cook in the 
kitchen. 

The faults 01 tea, as too commonly found at oui 
hotels and boax ding-houses, are that it is n?ade in 
every, way the reverse of what it should be. The 
water is hot, perhap.** but not boiling; the tea has 
a general flat, stale, smcky taste, devoid of life oi 
spirit j and it is served, usu^illy,. with thin milk, instead 
of cream. Cream is as essential to the richness of 
tea as of coffee. We could wish that the English 
fashion might generally prevail, of giving the travellei 
his own kettle of boiling water and his own tea-chesty, 
and letting him make tea for himself At all events^ 
he would then be sure of one merit in his tea, — i< 
would be hot, a very simple and obvious virtue, bu* 
one very seldom obtained. 

Chocolate is a French and Spanish article, and one 
seldom served on American tables. We, in America, 
however, make an article every way equal to any 



Cookery, 263 

which can be imported from Paris, and he who buys 
Baker's best vanilla-chocolate may rest assured that 
no foreign land can furnish anything better. A very 
rich and delicious beverage may be made by dissolv- 
ing this in milk slowly boiled down after the French 
fashion. 

I have now gone over all the ground I laid out, 
as comprising the great first principles of cookery; 
and I would here modestly offer the opinion that a 
table where all these principles are carefully observed 
would need few dainties. The struggle after so-called 
delicacies comes from the poorness of common things. 
Perfect bread and butter would soon drive cake out 
of the field ; it has done so in many families. Never- 
theless, I have a word to say under the head of Con- 
fectionery^ meaning by this the whole range of orna- 
mental cookery, — or pastry, ices, jellies, preserves, 
etc. The art of making all these very perfectly is far 
better understood in America than the art of common 
cooking. 

There are more women who know how to make 
good cake than good bread, — more who can furnish 
you with a good ice-cream than a well-cooked mutton- 
chop ; a fair charlotte-russe is easier to come by than 
a perfect cup of coffee, and you shall find a sparkling 
jelly to your dessert where you sighed in vain for so 
simple a luxury as a well-cooked potato. 



264 House and Home Papers, 

Our fair countrywomen might rest upon their laurels 
in these higher fields, and turn their great energy and 
ingenuity to the study of essentials. To do common 
things perfectly is far better worth our endeavor than 
to do uncommon things respectably. We Americans 
in many things as yet have been a little inclined to 
begin making our shirt at the ruffle ; but, neverthe- 
less, when we set about it, we can make the shirt 
as nicely as anybody, — it needs only that we turn 
our attention to it, resolved, that, ruffle or no ruffle, 
the shirt we will have. 

1 have also a few words to say as to the prevalent 
ideas in respect to French cookery. Having heard 
much of it, with no very distinct idea what it is, our 
people have somehow fallen into the notion that its 
forte lies in high spicing, — and so, when our cooks 
put a great abundance of clove, mace, nutmeg, and 
cinnamon into their preparations, they fancy that they 
are growing up to be French cooks. But the fact is, 
that the Americans and English are far more given 
to spicing than the French. Spices in our made 
dishes are abundant, and their taste is strongly pro- 
nouiced. In living a year in France I forgot the 
tas.e of nutmeg, clove, and allspice, which had met 
me in so many dishes in America. 

The thing may be briefly defined. The English 
and Americans deal in spices^ the French m flavors ^ — 



Cookery. 265 

flavors many and subtile, imitating often in their deli- 
cacy those subtile blendings which Nature produces 
in high-flavored fruits. The recipes of our cookery- 
books are most of them of English origin, coming 
down from the times of our phlegmatic ancestors, 
when the solid, burly, beef)^ growth of the foggy isl- 
and required the heat of fiery condiments, and could 
digest heavy sweets. Witness the national recipe for 
plum-pudding, which may be rendered, — Take a 
pound of every indigestible substance you can think 
of, boil into a cannon-ball, and serve in flaming 
brandy. So of the Christmas mince-pie and many 
other national dishes. But in America, owing to our 
brighter skies and more fervid climate, we have de- 
veloped an acute, nervous delicacy of temperament 
far more akin to that of France than of England. 

Half of the recipes in our cook-books are mere 
murder to such constitutions and stomachs as we 
grow here. We require to ponder these things, and 
think how we in our climate and under our circum- 
stances ought to live, and in doing so, we may, 
fvithout accusation of foreign foppery, take some 
eaves from many foreign books. 

But Christopher has prosed long enough. I mus^ 
now read this to my wife, and see what she says. 
12 



XL 

OUR HOUSE. 

OUR gallant Bob Stephens, into whose life-boat 
our Marianne has been received, has lately 
taken the mania of house-^building into his head. Bob 
is somewhat fastidious, difficult to please, fond of 
domesticities and individualities ; and such a man 
never can fit himself into a house built by another, 
and accordingly house-building has always been his 
favorite mental recreation. During all his courtship 
as much time was taken up in planning a future house 
as if he had money to build one ; and all Marianne's 
patterns, and the backs of half their letters, were 
scrawled with ground-plans and elevations. But lat- 
terly this chronic disposition has been quickened into 
an acute form by the falling-in of some few thousands 
to their domestic treasury, — left as the sole re- 
siduum of a painstaking old aunt, who took it into 
her head to make a will in Bob's favor, leaving, among 
other good things, a nice little bit of land in a rural 
district half an hour's railroad-ride from Boston. 

So now ground-plans thicken, and my wife is being 



Our House. 267 

consulted morning, noon, and night ; and I never 
come into the room without finding their heads close 
together over a paper, and hearing Bob expatiate on 
his favorite idea of a library. He appears to have 
got so far as this, that the ceihng is to be of carved 
oak, with ribs running to a boss over head, and 
finished mediaevally with ultramarine blue and gilding, 
— and then away he goes sketching Gothic patterns 
of book-shelves which require only experienced carv- 
ers, and the wherewithal to pay them, to be the 
divinest things in the world. 

Marianne is exercised about china-closets and pan- 
tries, and about a bedroom on the ground-floor, — 
for, Hke all other women of our days, she expects not 
to have strength enough to run up-stairs oftener than 
once or twice a week ; and my wife, who is a native 
genius in this line, and has planned in her time doz- 
ens of houses for acquaintances, wherein they are at 
this moment living happily, goes over every day with 
her pencil and ruler the work of rearranging the plans, 
according as the ideas of the young couple veer and 
vary. 

One day Bob is importuned to give two feet off 
ft-om his library for a closet in the bedroom, — but 
resists like a Trojan. The next morning, being mol- 
lified by private domestic supplications. Bob yields, 
and my wife rubs out the lines of yesterday, two feet 



268 House and Home Papers, 

come off the library, and a closet is constructed. But 
now the parlor proves too narrow, — the parlor-wall 
must be moved two feet into the hall. Bob declares 
this will spoil the symmetry of the latter ; and if there 
is anything he wants, it is a wide, generous, ample hall 
to step into when you open the front-door. 

" Well, then," says Marianne, " let 's put two feet 
more into the width of the house." 

" Can 't on account of the expense, you see," says 
Bob. " You see every additional foot of outside wall 
necessitates so many more bricks, so much more floor- 
ing, so much more roofing, etc." 

And my wife, with thoughtful brow, looks over the 
plans, and considers how two feet more are to be got 
into the parlor without moving any of the walls. 

"I say," says Bob, bending over her shoulder, 
" here, take your two feet in the parlor, and put two 
more feet on to the other side of the hall-stairs " ; 
and he dashes heavily with his pencil. 

" O, Bob ! " exclaims Marianne, " there are the 
kitchen-pantries ! you ruin them, — and no place for 
the cellar-stairs ! " * 

^' Hang the pantries and cellar-stairs ! " says Bob. 
" Mother must find a place for them somewhere else. 
I say the house must be roomy and cheerful, and pan- 
tries and those things may take care of themselves ; 
they can be put somewhere well enough. No fear 



Our House. 269 

but you will find a place for them somewhere. What 
do you women always want such a great enormous 
kitchen for ? " 

*'Tt is not any larger than is necessary," said my 
wife, thoughtfully ; " nothing is gained by taking off 
from it." 

" What if you should put it all down into a base- 
ment," suggests Bob, " and so get it all out of sight 
together ? " 

"Never if it can be helped," said my wife. "Base- 
ment-kitchens are necessary evils, only to be tolerated 
in cities where land is too dear to afford any other." 

So goes the discussion till the trio agree to sleep 
over it. The next morning an inspiration visits my 
wife's pillow. She is up and seizes plans and paper, 
and before six o'clock has enlarged the parlor very 
cleverly, by throwing out a bow-window. So waxes 
and wanes the prospective house, innocently battered 
down and rebuilt with India-rubber and black-lead. 
Doors are cut out to-night, and walled up to-morrow ; 
windows knocked out here and put in there, as some ob- 
server suggests possibilities of too much or too little 
draught. Now all seems finished, when, lo, a discovery! 
There is no fireplace nor stove-flue in my lady's bed- 
room, and can be none without moving the bathing- 
room. Pencil and India-rubber are busy again, and fot 
a while the whole house seems to threaten to fall to 



2/0 House and Home Papers. 

pieces with the confusion of the moving; the bath-room 
wanders hke a ghost, now invading a closet, now threat- 
ening the tranquilhty of the parlor, till at last it is 
laid by some unheard-of calculations of my wife's, 
and sinks to rest in a place so much better that every 
body wonders it never was thought of before. 

"Papa," said Jenny, "it appears to me people 
don't exactly know what they want when they build ; 
why don't you write a paper on house-building ? " 

" I have thought of it," said I, with the air of a man 
called to settle some great reform. " It must be en- 
tirely because Christopher has not written that our 
young people and mamma are tangling themselves 
daily in webs which are untangled the next day." 

"You see," said Jenny, "they have only just so 
much money, and they want everything they can think 
of under the sun. There 's Bob been studying archi- 
tectural antiquities, and nobody knows what, ana 
sketching all sorts of curly- whorlies ; and Marianne has 
her notions about a parlor and boudoir and china- 
closets and bedroom-closets ; and Bob wants a baro- 
nial hall ; and mamma stands out for linen-closets and 
bathing-rooms and all that ; and so among them all it 
will just end in getting them head over ears in debt" 

The thing struck me as not improbable. 

"I don't know, Jenny, whether my writing an ar- 
ticle is going to prevent all this ; but as my time in the 



Our House. 271 

* Atlantic* is coming round, I may as well write on 
what I am obliged to think of, and so I will give a 
paper on the subject to enliven our next evening's 
session." 

So that evening, when Bob and Marianne had 
dropped in as usual, and while the customary work 
of drawing and rubbing-out was going on at Mrs. 
Crowfield's sofa, I produced my paper and read as 
follows : — 

OUR HOUSE. 

There is a place called " Our House," which every- 
Dody knows of. The sailor talks of it in his dreams 
at sea. The wounded soldier, turning in his uneasy 
hospital-bed, brightens at the word; it is like the 
dropping of cool water in the desert, like the touch 
of cool fingers on a burning brow. " Our house," he 
says feebly, and the light comes back into his dim 
eyes, — for all homely charities, all fond thoughts, all 
purities, all that man loves on earth or hopes for in 
heaven, rise with the word. 

" Our house " may be in any style of architecture, 
low or high. It may be the brown old farm-house, 
with its tall well-sweep ; or the one-stor}^ gambrel-roofed 
cottage ; or the large, square, white house, with green 
blinds, under the wind-swung elms of a century ; or 
it may be the log-cabin of the wilderness, with its one 



272 House and Home Papers, 

room, — still there is a spell in the memory of it be- 
yond all conjurations. Its stone and brick and mortar 
are like no other; its very clapboards and shingles 
are dear to us, powerful to bring back the memories 
of early days, and all that is sacred in home-love. 

*^ Papa is getting quite sentimental," whispered Jen- 
ny, loud enough for me to hear. I shook my head at 
her impressively, and went on undaunted. 

There is no one fact of our human existence that 
has a stronger influence upon us than the house we 
dwell in, — especially that in which our earlier and 
more impressible years are spent. The building and 
arrangement of a house influence the health, the com- 
fort, the morals, the religion. There have been houses 
built so devoid of all consideration for the occupants, 
so rambling and hap-hazard in the disposal of rooms, 
so sunless and cheerless and wholly without snugness 
or privacy, as to make it seem impossible to live a 
joyous, generous, rational, religious family-life in them. 

There are, we shame to say, in our cities things 
called houses, built and rented by people who walk 
erect and have the general air and manner of civilized 
and Christianized men, which are so inhuman in their 
building that they can only be called snares and traps 
for souls, — places where children cannot well escape 



Our House. 273 

growihg up filthy and impure, — places where to form 
a home is impossible, and to live a decent, Christian 
life would require miraculous strength. 

A celebrated British philanthropist, who had de- 
voted much study to the dwellings of the poor, gave 
it as his opinion that temperance-societies were a 
hopeless undertaking in London, unless these dwell- 
ings underwent a transformation. They were so 
squalid, so dark, so comfortless, so constantly press- 
ing upon the senses foulness, pain, and inconven- 
ience, that it was only by being drugged with gin and 
opium that their miserable inhabitants could find heart 
to drag on Hfe from day to day. He had himself tried 
the experiment of reforming a drunkard by taking him 
from one of these loathsome dens, and enabling him 
to rent a tenement in a block of model lodging-houses 
which had been built under his supervision. The 
young man had been a designer of figures for prints ; 
he was of a delicate frame, and a nervous, susceptible 
temperament. Shut in one miserable room with his 
wife and little children, without the possibility of pure 
air, with only filthy, fetid water to drink, with the 
noise of other miserable families resounding through 
the thin partitions, what possibility was there of doing 
anything except by the help of stimulants, which for 
a brief hour lifted him above the perception of these 

miseries ? Changed at once to a neat flat, where, for 
12* 



2/4 House and Home Papers, 

the same r^nt as his former den, he had three good 
rooms, vyith water for drinking, house-service, and 
bathing freely suppHed, and the blessed sunshine and 
air coming in through windows well arranged for ven- 
tilation, he became in a few weeks a new man. In 
the charms of the little spot which he could call home, 
its quiet, its order, his former talent came back to him, 
and he found strength, in pure air and pure water and 
those purer thoughts of which they are the emblems, 
to abandon burning and stupefying stimulants. 

The influence of dwelling-houses for good or for 
evil — their influence on the brain, the nerves, and, 
through these, on the heart and life — is one of those 
things that cannot be enough pondered by those who 
build houses to sell or rent. 

Something more generous ought to inspire a man 
than merely the percentage which he can get for his 
money. He who would build houses should think 
a little on the subject. He should reflect what houses 
are for, — what they maybe made to do for human 
beings. The great majority of houses in cities are 
not built by the indwellers themselves, — they are 
built for them by those who invest their money in 
this way, with little other thought than the percentage 
which the investment will return. 

For persons of ample fortune there ara, indeed, 
palatial residences, with all that wealth c«> do to 



Our House, 275 

render life delightful. But in that class of houses 
which must be the lot of the large majority, those 
which must be chosen by young men in the begin- 
ning of life, when means are comparatively restricted, 
there is yet wide room for thought and the judicious 
application of money. 

In looking over houses to be rented by persons of 
moderate means, one cannot help longing to build, — 
one sees so many ways in which the same sum which 
built an inconvenient and unpleasant house might 
have been made to build a delightful one. 

"That's so!" said Bob, with emphasis. "Don't 
you remember, Marianne, how many dismal, com- 
monplace, shabby houses we trailed through?" 

"Yes," said Marianne. "You remember those 
houses with such little squeezed rooms and that flour- 
ishing staircase, with the colored-glass china-closet win- 
dow, and no butler's sink ? " 

" Yes," said Bob ; " and those astonishing, abom- 
inable stone abortions that adorned the door-steps. 
People do lay out a deal of money to make houses 
look ugly, it must be confessed." 

" One w^ould willingly," said Marianne, " dispense 
with frightful stone ornaments in front, and with heavy 
mouldings inside, which are of no possible use or 
beauty, and with showy plaster cornices and centre- 



2/6 House and Home Papers, 

pieces in the parlor-ceilings, and even with marble 
mantels, for the luxury of hot and cold water in each 
chamber, and a couple of comfortable bath-rooms. 
Then, the disposition of windows and doors is so 
wholly without regard to convenience ! How often 
we find rooms, meant for bedrooms, where really there 
is no good place for either bed or dressing-table ! " 

Here my wife looked up, having just finished re- 
drawing the plans to the latest alteration. 

" One of the greatest reforms that could be, in these 
reforming days," she observed, "would be to have 
women architects. The mischief with houses built 
to rent is that they are all mere male contrivances. 
No woman would ever plan chambers where there 
is no earthly place to set a bed except against a win- 
dow or door, or waste the room in entries that might 
be made into closets. I don't see, for my part, apro- 
pos to the modern movement for opening new profes- 
sions to the female sex, why there should not be 
well-educated female architects. The planning and 
arrangement of houses, and the laying-out of grounds, 
are a fair subject of womanly knowledge and taste. 
It is the teaching of Nature. What would anybody 
think of a bluebird's nest that had been built entirely 
by Mr. Blue, without the help of his wife .^ " 

" My dear," said I, " you must positively send a 
paper on this subject to the next Woman's-Rights 
Convention." 



Our House, 277 

"I am of lojoumer Truth's opinion," said my wife, 
*— " that the best way to prove the propriety of one's 
doing anything is to go and do it, A woman who 
should have energy to go through the preparatory 
studies and set to work in this field would, I am sure, 
soon find employment." 

" If she did as well as you would do, my dear," said 
I. " There are plenty of young women in our Boston 
high-schools who are going through higher fields of 
mathematics than are required by the architect, and 
the schools for design show the flexibility and fertil- 
ity of the female pencil. The thing appears to me 
altogether more feasible than many other openings 
which have been suggested to woman." 

" Well," said Jenny, " is n't papa ever to go on 
with his paper?" 

I continued : — - 

What ought " our house " to be ? Could any other 
question be asked admitting in its details of such 
-varied answers, — answers various as the means, the 
character, and situation of different individuals ? But 
there are great wants pertaining to every human being, 
into which all lesser ones run. There are things in a 
house that every one, high or low, rich or poor, ought, 
according to his means, to seek. I think I shall class 
them according to the elemental division of the old 



278 House and Home Papers, 

philosophers, — Fire, Air, Earth, and Water. These 
form the groundwork of this need-be^ — the sine-qua* 
nons of a house. 

" Fire, air, earth, and water ! I don't understand/' 
said Jenny. 

" Wait a httle till you do, then," said I. '' I will 
try to make my meaning plain." 

The first object of a house is shelter from the ele- 
ments. This object is effected by a tent or wigwam 
which keeps off rain and wind. The first disadvan- 
tage of this shelter is, that the vital air which you take 
into your lungs, and on the purity of which depends 
the purity of blood and brain and nerve, is vitiated. 
In the wigvvam or tent you are constantly taking in 
poison, more or less active, with every inspiration. 
Napoleon had his army sleep without tents. He 
stated, that from experience, he found it more healthy^ 
and wonderful have been the instances of delicate per 
sons gaining constantly in vigor from being obliged. 
in the midst of hardships, to sleep constantly in the 
open air. Now the first problem in house-building u 
to combine the advantage of shelter with the fresh 
elasticity of out-door air. I am not going to give here 
a treatise on ventilation, but merely to say, in general 
terms, that the first object of a house-builder or con- 



Our House. 279 

triver should be to make a healthy house ; and the first 
requisite of a healthy house is a pure, sweet, elastic air. 

I am in favor, therefore, of those plans of house- 
building which have wide central spaces, whether 
halls or courts, into which all the rooms open, and 
which necessarily preserve a body of fresh air for the 
use of them all. In hot climates this is the object 
of the central court which cuts into the body of the 
house, with its fountain and flowers, and its galleries, 
into which the various apartments open. When peo- 
ple are restricted for space, and cannot afford to give 
up wide central portions of the house for the mere 
purposes of passage, this central hall can be made 
a pleasant sitting-room. With tables, chairs, book- 
cases, and sofas comfortably disposed, this ample 
central room above and below is, in many respects, 
the most agreeable lounging-room of the house ; while 
the parlors below and the chambers above, opening 
upon it, form agreeable withdrawing-rooms for pur- 
poses of greater privacy. 

It is customary with many persons to sleep with 
bedroom windows open, — a very imperfect and often 
dangerous mode of procuring that supply of fresh air 
which a sleeping-room requires. In a house con- 
siructed in the manner indicated, windows might be 
freely left open in these central halls, producing there 
a constant movement of air, and the doors of the bed- 



28o House and Home Papers, 

rooms placed ajar, when a very slight opening in the 
windows would create a free circulation through the 
apartments. 

In the planning of a house, thought should be had 
as to the general disposition of the windows, and the 
quarters from which favoring breezes may be expected 
should be carefully considered. Windows should be 
so arranged that draughts of air can be thrown quite 
through and across the house. How often have we 
seen pale mothers and drooping babes fanning and 
panting during some of our hot days on the sunny 
side of a house, while the breeze that should have 
cooled them beat in vain against a dead wall ! One 
longs sometimes to knock holes through partitions, 
and let in the air of heaven. 

No other gift of God, so precioHS, so inspiring, is 
treated with such utter irreverence and contempt in 
the calculations of us mortals as this same air of 
heaven. A sermon on oxygen, if one had a preacher 
who understood the subject, might do more to repress 
sin than the most orthodox discourse to show when 
and how and why sin came. A minister gets up in 
a crowded lecture-room, where the mephitic air almost 
makes the candles burn blue, and bewails the dead- 
ness of the church, — the church the while, drugged 
by the poisoned air, growing sleepier and sleepier, 
though they feel dreadfully wicked for being so. 



Our House, 281 

Little Jim, who, fresh from his afternoon's ramble 
in the fields, last evening said his prayers dutifully, 
and lay down to sleep in a most Christian frame, this 
morning sits up in bed with his hair bristling with 
crossness, strikes at his nurse, and declares he won't 
say his prayers, — that he don't want to be good. 
The simple difference is, that the child, having slept 
in a close box of a room, his brain all night fed by 
poison, is in a mild state of moral insanity. Deli- 
cate women remark that it takes them till eleven or 
twelve o'clock to get up their strength in the morning. 
Query, — Do they sleep with closed windows and 
doors, and with heavy bed-curtains? 

The houses built by our ancestors were better ven- 
tilated in certain respects than modern ones, with all 
their improvements. The great central chimney, with 
its open fireplaces in the different rooms, created a 
constant current which carried off foul and vitiated 
air. In these days, how common is it to provide 
rooms with only a flue for a stove ! This flue is kept 
shut in summer, and in winter opened only to admit 
a close stove, which burns away the vital portion of 
the air quite as fast as the occupants breathe it away. 
The sealing-up of fireplaces and introduction of air- 
tight stoves may, doubtless, be a saving of fuel : it 
saves, too, more than that; in thousands and thou- 
sands ef cases it has saved people from all further 



282 House and Home Papers, 

human wants, and put an end forever to any needs 
short of the six feet of narrow earth which are man's 
only inalienable property. In other words, since the 
invention of air-tight stoves, thousands have died of 
slow poison. It is a terrible thing to reflect upon, 
that our northern winters last from November to 
May, six long months, in which many families confine 
themselves to one room, of which every window-crack 
has been carefully calked to make it air-tight, where 
an air-tight stove keeps the atmosphere at a tempera- 
ture between eighty and ninety, and the inmates sit- 
ting there with all their winter clothes on become 
enervated both by the heat and by the poisoned air, 
for which there is no escape but the occasional open- 
ing of a door. 

It is no wonder that the first result of all this is 
such a delicacy of skin and lungs that about half the 
inmates are obliged to give up going into the open 
air during the six cold months, because they invari- 
ably catch cold, if they do so. It is no wonder that 
the cold caught about the first of December has by 
the first of March become a fixed consumption, and 
that the opening of the spring, which ought to bring 
life and health, in so many cases brings death. 

We hear of the lean condition in which the poor 
bears emerge from their six-months' wintering, during 
which they subsist on the fat which they have acquired 



Our House, 283 

the previous summer. Even so in our long winters, 
multitudes of delicate people subsist on the daily 
waning strength which they acquired in the season 
when windows and doors were open, and fresh air 
was a constant luxury. No wonder we hear of spring 
fever and spring biliousness, and have thousands of 
nostrums for clearing the blood in the spring. All 
these things are the pantings and palpitations of a 
system run down under slow poison, unable to get 
a step farther. Better, far better, the old houses of 
the olden time, with their great roaring fires, and their 
bedrooms where the snow came in and the wintry 
winds whistled. Then, to be sure, you froze your 
back while you burned your face, your water froze 
nightly in your pitcher, your breath congealed in ice- 
wreaths on the blankets, and you could write your 
name on the pretty snow-wreath that had sifted in 
through the window-cracks. But you woke full of life 
and vigor, — you looked out into whirling snow-storms 
without a shiver, and thought nothing of plunging 
through drifts as high as your head on your daily way 
to school. You jingled in sleighs, you snowballed, 
you lived in snow like a snow-bird, and your blood 
coursed and tingled, in full tide of good, merry, real 
life, through your veins, — none of the slow-creeping, 
black blood which clogs the brain and lies like a 
weight on the vital wheels ! 



284 House and Home Papers, 

" Mercy upon us, papa ! " said Jenny, " I hope we 
need not go back to such houses ! " 

"No, my dear,'' I replied. "I only said that such 
houses were better than those which are all winter 
closed by double windows and burnt-out air-tight 
stoves." 

The perfect house is one in which there is a con- 
stant escape of every foul and vitiated particle of air 
through one opening, while a constant supply of fresh 
out-door air is admitted by another. In winter, this 
out-door air must pass through some process by which 
it is brought up to a temperate warmth. 

Take a single room, and suppose on one side a cur- 
rent of out-door air which has been warmed by pass- 
ing through the air-chamber of a modern furnace. Its 
temperature need not be above sixty-five, — it answers 
breathing purposes better at that. On the other side 
of the room let there be an open wood- or coal-fire. 
One cannot conceive the purposes of warmth and 
ventilation more perfectly combined. 

Suppose a house with a great central hall, into 
which a current of fresh, temperately warmed air is 
continually pouring. Each chamber opening upon 
this hall has a chimney up w^hose flue the rarefied air 
is constantly passing, drawing up with it all the foul 
and poisonous gases. That house is well ventilated, 



Our House, 285 

and in a way that need bring no dangerous draughts 
upon the most delicate invalid. For the better se- 
curing of privacy in sleeping-rooms, we have seen two 
doors employed, one of which is made with slats, like 
a window-blind, so that air is freely transmitted with- 
out exposing the interior. 

When we speak of fresh air, we insist on the full 
rigor of the term. It must not be the air of a cellar, 
heavily laden with the poisonous nitrogen of turnips 
and cabbages, but good, fresh, out-door air from a cold- 
air pipe, so placed as not to get the lower stratum 
near the ground, where heavy damps and exhalations 
collect, but high up, in just the clearest and most elas- 
tic region. 

The conclusion of the whole matter is, that as all of 
man's and woman's peace and comfort, all their love, 
all their amiability, all their religion, have got to come 
to them, while they live in this world, through the 
medium of the brain, — and as black, uncleansed 
blood acts on the brain as a poison, and as no other 
than black, uncleansed blood can be got by the lungs 
out of impure air, — the first object of the man who 
builds a house is to secure a pure and healthy atmos- 
phere therein. 

Therefore, in allotting expenses, set this down as a 
must-be: " Our house must have fresh air^ — every- 
where, at all times, winter and summer." Whether 



286 House and Home Papers, 

we have stone facings or no, — whether our parlor has 
cornices or marble mantles or no, — whether our 
doors are machine-made or hand-made. All our fix- 
tures shall be of the plainest and simplest, but we 
will have fresh air. We will open our door with a 
latch and string, if we cannot afford lock and knob 
and fresh air too, — but in our house we will live 
cleanly and Christianly. We will no more breathe 
the foul air rejected from a neighbor's lungs than 
we will use a neighbor's tooth-brush and hair-brush. 
Such is the first essential of "our house," — the 
first great element of human health and happiness, 
— Air. 

"I say, Marianne," said Bob, *^have we got fire- 
places in our chambers ? " 

" Mamma took care of that," said Marianne. 

" You may be quite sure," said I, " if your mother 
has had a hand in planning your house, that the ven- 
tilation is cared for." 

It must be confessed that Bob's principal idea in a 
house had been a Gothic library, and his mind had 
labored more on the possibility of adapting some fa- 
vorite bits from the baronial antiquities to modern 
needs than on anything so terrestrial as air. There- 
fore he awoke as from a dream, and taking two or 
three monstrous inhalations, he seized the plans and 



Our House, 287 

began looking over them with new energy. Mean- 
while I went on with my prelection. 

The second great vital element for which provision 
must be made in " our house " is Fire. By which I 
do not mean merely artificial fire, but fire in all its 
extent and branches, — the heavenly fire which God 
sends us daily on the bright wings of sunbeams, as 
well as the mimic fires by which we warm our dwell- 
ings, cook our food, and light our nightly darkness. 

To begin, then, with heavenly fire or sunshine. If 
God's gift of vital air is neglected and undervalued, 
His gift of sunshine appears to be hated. There are 
many houses where not a cent has been expended on 
ventilation, but where hundreds of dollars have been 
freely lavished to keep out the sunshine. The cham- 
ber, truly, is tight as a box, — it has no fireplace, not 
even a ventilator opening into the stove-flue ; but, oh, 
joy and gladness ! it has outside blinds and inside 
folding-shutters, so that in the brightest of days we 
may create there a darkness that may be felt. To 
observe the generality of New-England houses^ a 
spectator might imagine they were planned for the 
torrid zone, where the great object is to keep out a 
furnace-draught of burning air. 

But let us look over the months of our calendar. 
In which of ^*\em do we not need fires on our hearths ? 



288 House and Home Papers, 

We will venture to say that from October to June all 
families, whether they actually have it or not, would 
be the more comfortable for a morning and evening 
fire. For eight months in the year the weather varies 
on the scale of cool, cold, colder, and freezing ; and 
for all the four other months what is the number of 
days that really require the torrid-zone system of 
shutting up houses ? We all know that extreme heat 
is the exception, and not the rule. 

Yet let anybody travel, as I did last year, through 
the valley of the Connecticut, and observe the houses. 
All clean and white and neat and well-to-do, with 
their turfy yards and their breezy great elms, — but 
all shut up from basement to attic, as if the inmates 
had all sold out and gone to China. Not a window- 
blind open above or below. Is the house inhabited ? 
No, — yes, — there is a faint stream of blue smoke 
from the kitchen-chimney, and half a window-blind 
open in some distant back-part of the house. They 
are living there in the dim shadows, bleaching like 
potato-sprouts in the cellar. 

^^ I can tell you why they do it, papa," said Jenny, 
' ^ " It 's the flies, and flies are certainly worthy to be 
one of the plagues of Egypt. I can 't myself blame 
people that shut up their rooms and darken their 
houses in fly-time, — do you, mamma ? " 



Our House. 289 

" Not in extreme cases ; though I think there is but 
a short season when this is necessary ; yet the habit 
of shutting up lasts the year round, and gives to New- 
England villages that dead, silent, cold, uninhabited 
look which is so peculiar. 

" The one fact that a traveller would gather in pass- 
ing through our villages would be this," said I, " that 
the people live in their houses and in the dark. 
Rarely do you see doors and windows open, people 
sitting at them, chairs in the yard, and signs that the 
inhabitants are living out-of-doors," 

" Well," said Jenny, " I have told you why, for I 
have been at Uncle Peter's m summer, and aunt does 
her spring-cleaning in May, and then she shuts all the 
blinds and drops all the curtains, and the house stays 
clean till October. That's the whole of it. If she 
had all her windows open, there would be paint and 
windows to be cleaned every week; and who is to 
do it ? For my part, I can 't much blame her." 

" Well," said I, " I have my doubts about the sov- 
ereign efficacy of living in the dark, even if the great 
object of existence were to be rid of flies. I remem- 
6er, during this same journey, stopping for a day or 
two at a country boarding-house which was dark as 
Egypt from cellar to garret. The long, dim, gloomy 
dining-room was first closed by outside bhnds, and 
then by impenetrable paper curtains, notwithstanding 
13 s 



290 House and Home Papers. 

which it swarmed and buzzed like a beehive. You 
found where the cake-plate was by the buzz which your 
hand made, if you chanced to reach in that direction. 
It was disagreeable, because in the darkness flies 
could not always be distinguished from huckleberries j 
and I could n't help wishing, that, since we must have 
the flies, we might at last have the light and air to 
console us under them. People darken their rooms 
and shut up every avenue of out-door enjoyment, and 
sit and think of nothing but flies ; in fact, flies are all 
they have left. No wonder they become morbid on 
the subject." 

"Well, now, papa talks just like a man, doesn't 
he ? " said Jenny. " He has n't the responsibility of 
keeping things clean. I wonder what he would do, 
if he were a housekeeper." 

" Do ? I will tell you. I would do the best I 
vould. I would shut my eyes on fly-specks, and 
open them on the beauties of Nature. I would let 
the cheerful sun in all day long, in all but the few 
summer days when coolness is the one thing needful : 
those days may be soon numbered every year. I 
would make a calculation in the spring how much it 
would cost to hire a woman to keep my windows 
and paint clean, and I would do with one less gown 
and have her ; and when I had spent all I could aflbrd 
on cleaning windows and paint, I would harden my 



Our House, 291 

heart and turn off my eyes, and enjoy my sunshine, 
and my fresh air, my breezes, and all that can be seen 
through the picture-windows of an open, airy house, 
and snap my fingers at the flies. There you have it." 

" Papa's hobby is sunshine," said Marianne. 

" Why shouldn't it be ? Was God mistaken, when 
He made the sun ? Did He make him for us to hold 
a life's battle with ? Is that vital power which reddens 
the cheek of the peach and pours sweetness through 
the fruits and flowers of no use to us ? Look at 
plants that grow without sun, — wan, pale, long-vis- 
aged, holding feeble, imploring hands of supplication 
towards the light. Can human beings aflbrd to throw 
away a vitalizing force so pungent, so exhilarating? 
You remember the experiment of a prison, where 
one row of cells had daily sunshine, and the others 
none. With the same regimen, the same cleanliness, 
the same care, the inmates of the sunless cells were 
visited with sickness and death in double measure. 
Our whole population in New England are groaning 
and suffering under afflictions, the result of a depressed 
vitality, — neuralgia, with a new ache for every day 
of the year, rheumatism, consumption, general de- 
bility ; for all these a thousand nostrums are daily 
advertised, and money enough is spent on them to 
equip an army, while we are fighting against, wasting, 
and throwing away with both hands that blessed 



292 House and Home Papers. 

inf}.Tience which comes nearest to pure vitality of any- 
thing God has given. 

" Who is it that the Bible describes as a sun, arising 
with healing in his wings ? Surely, that sunshine 
which is the chosen type and image of His love must 
be healing through all the recesses of our daily life, 
dr}-ing damp and mould, defending from moth and 
rust, sweetening ill smells, clearing from the nerves 
the vapors of melancholy, making life cheery. If I 
did not know Him, I should certainly adore and wor- 
ship the sun, the most blessed and beautiful image of 
Him among things visible ! In the land of Egypt, in 
the day of God's wrath, there was darkness, but in the 
land of Goshen there was light. I am a Goshenite, 
and mean to walk in the light, and forswear the works 
of darkness. But to proceed with our reading." 

" Our house " shall be set on a southeast Une, so 
that there shall not be a sunless room in it, and win- 
dows shall be so arranged that it can be traversed and 
transpierced through and through with those bright 
shafts of light which come straight from God. 

" Our house " shall not be blockaded with a dank, 
dripping mass of shrubbery set plumb against the win- 
dows, keeping out light and air. There shall be room 
all round it for breezes to sweep, and sunshine to 
sweeten and dry and vivify; and I would warn all 



Our House, 293 

good souls who begin life by setting out two little ever- 
green-trees within a foot of each of their front-windows, 
that these trees will grow and increase till t'leir front- 
rooms will be brooded over by a sombre, stiflmg 
shadow fit only for ravens to croak in. 

One would think, by the way some people hasten to 
convert a very narrow front-yard into a dismal jungle, 
that the only danger of our New England climate was 
sunstroke. Ah, in those drizzling months which form 
at least one half of our life here, what sullen, censo- 
rious, uncomfortable, unhealthy thoughts are bred of 
living in dark, chilly rooms, behind such dripping 
thickets ? Our neighbors' faults assume a deeper hue, 
— life seems a dismal thing, — our very religion grows 
mouldy. 

My idea of a house is, that, as far as is consistent 
with shelter and reasonable privacy, it should give you 
on first entering an open, breezy, out-door freshness of 
sensation. Every window should be a picture ; sun 
and trees and clouds and green grass should seem 
never to be far from us. " Our house " may shade but 
not darken us. "Our house" shall have bow-windows^ 
many, sunny, and airy, — not for the purpose of being 
cleaned and shut up, but to be open and enjoyed. 
There shall be long verandahs above and below, wher^ 
invalids may walk dry-shod, and enjoy open-^ir recre- 
ation in wettest weather. In short, I will try to have 



294 House arid Home Papers, 

" our house " combine as far as possible the sunny, joy- 
ous, fresh hfe of a gypsy in the fields and woods with 
the quiet and neatness and comfort and shelter of a 
roof, rooms, floors, and carpets. 

After heavenly fire, I have a word to say of earthly, 
artificial fires. Furnaces, whether of hot water, steam, 
or hot air, are all healthy and admirable provisions for 
warming our houses during the eight or nine months 
of our year that we must have artificial heat, if only, 
as I have said, fireplaces keep up a current of ventila- 
tion. 

The kitchen-range with its water-back I humbly sa- 
lute. It is a great throbbing heart, and sends its warm 
tides of cleansing, comforting fluid all through the 
house. One could wish that this friendly dragon could 
be in some way moderated in his appetite for coal, — 
he does consume without mercy, it must be confessed, 
— but then great is the work he has to do. At any 
hour of day or night, in the most distant part of your 
house, you have but to turn a stop-cock and your red 
dragon sends you hot water for your needs ; your 
washing-day becomes a mere play-day; your pantry 
has its ever-ready supply ; and then, by a little judi- 
cious care in arranging apartments and economizing 
heat, a range may make two or three chambers com- 
fortable in winter weather. A range with a water- 
back is among the must-bes in "our house." 



Our House. 295 

Then, as to the evening light, — I know nothing as 
yet better than gas, where it can be had. I would 
certainly not have a house without it. The great ob- 
jection to it is the danger of its escape through imper- 
fect fixtures. But it must not do this ; a fluid that kills 
a tree or a plant with one breath must certainly be a 
dangerous ingredient in the atmosphere, and if admit- 
ted into houses, must be introduced with every safe- 
guard. 

There are families living in the country who make 
their own gas by a very simple process. This is worth 
an inquiry from those who build. There are also con- 
trivances now advertised, with good testimonials, of 
domestic machines for generating gas, said to be 
perfectly safe, simple to be managed, and producing a 
light superior to that of the city gas-works. This 
also is worth an inquiry when " our house " is to be 
in the country. 

And now I come to the next great vital element for 
which " our house " must provide, — Water. " Water, 
water, everywhere," — it must be plentiful, it must be 
easy to get at, it must be pure. Our ancestors had 
some excellent ideas in home-living and house-build- 
ing. Their houses were, generally speaking, very sen- 
sibly contrived, — roomy, airy, and comfortable ; but 
in their water- arrangements they had little mercy or 



296 House and Home Papers. 

womankinc The well was out in the yard ; and in 
winter one n.iist flounder through snow and bring up 
the ice-bound bucket, before one could fill the tea- 
kettle for breakfast. For a sovereign princess of the 
republic this was hardly respectful or respectable. 
Wells have come somewhat nearer in modern times j 
but the idea of a constant supply of fresh water by the 
simple turning of a stop-cock has not yet visited the 
great body of our houses. Were we free to build 
*'our house" just as we wish it, there should be a 
bath-room to every two or three inmates, and the hot 
and cold water should circulate to every chamber. 

Among our must-hes^ we would lay by a generous 
sum for plumbing. Let us have our bath-rooms, and 
our arrangements for cleanliness and health in kitchen 
and pantry; and afterwards let the qualit}^ of our 
lumber and the style of our finishings be according to 
the sum we have left. The power to command a 
warm bath in a house at any hour of day or night is 
better in bringing up a family of children than any 
amount of ready medicine. In three-quarters of 
childish ailments the warm bath is an almost im- 
mediate remedy. Bad colds, incipient fevers, rheu- 
matisms, convulsions, neuralgias imnumerable, are 
washed off in their fiibt beginnings, and run down the 
lead pipes into oblivion. Have, then, O friend, all 
the water in your house that you can afford, and en- 



Our House. 297 

large your ideas of the worth of it, that you may afford 
a great deal. A batling-room is nothing to you that 
requires an hour of hfting and fire-making to prepare 
it for use. The apparatus is too cumbrous, — you do 
not turn to it. But when your chamber opens upon 
a neat, quiet little nook, and you have only to turn 
your stop-cocks and all is ready, your remedy is at 
hand, you use it constantly. You are waked in the 
night by a scream, and find little Tom sitting up, wild 
with burning fever. In three minutes he is in the 
bath, quieted and comfortable ; you get him back, 
cooled and tranquil, to his little crib, and in the morn- 
ing he wakes as if nothing had happened. 

Why should not so invaluable and simple a remedy 
for disease, such a preservative of health, such a com- 
fort, such a stimulus, be considered as much a matter- 
ter-of course in a house as a kitchen-chimney? At 
least there should be one bath-room always in order, 
so arranged that all the family can have access to it, 
if one cannot afford the luxury of many. 

A house in which water is universally and skilfully 
distributed is so much easier to take care of as almost 
to verify the saying of a friend, that his house was so 
contrived that it did its own work : one had better do 
without carpets on the floors, withe it stuffed sofas and 
rocking-chairs, and secure this. 

13' 



£98 House and Home Papers. 

*' Well, papa," said Marianne, " you have made out 
all your four elements in your house, except one. I 
can't imagine what you want of earths 

" I thought," said Jenny, " that the less of our com- 
mon mother we had in our houses, the better house- 
keepers we were." 

" My dears," said I, " we philosophers must give 
in occasional dip into the mystical, and say something 
apparently absurd for the purpose of explaining that 
we mean nothing in particular by it. It gives com- 
mon people an idea of our sagacity, to find how clear 
we come out of our apparent contradictions and ab- 
•^urdities. Listen." 

For ti;.^ fourth requisite of " our house," Earth, let 
me point you to your mother's plant-window, and beg 
you to remember the fact that through our long, dreary 
winters we are never a month without flowers, and the 
vivid interest which always attac4ies to growing things. 
The perfect house, as I conceive it, is to combine as 
many of the advantages of living out of doors as may 
be consistent with warmth and shelter, and one of 
these is the sympathy with green and growing things. 
Plants are nearer in their relations to human health 
and vigor than is often imagined. The cheerfulness 
that well-kept plants impart to a room comes not 
merely from gratification of the eye, — there is a 



Our House, 299 

Healthful exhalation from them, they are a corrective 
of the impurities of the atmosphere. Plants, too, are 
valuable as tests of the vitality of the atmosphere ; 
their drooping and failure convey to us information 
that something is amiss with it. A lady once told me 
that she could never raise plants in her parlors on 
account of the gas and anthracite coal. I answered, 
" Are you not afraid to live and bring up your children 
in an atmosphere which blights your plants ? " If the 
gas escapes from the pipes, and the red-hot anthracite 
coal or the red-hot air-tight stove burns out all the 
vital part of the air, so that healthy plants in a few 
days wither and begin to drop their leaves, it is a sign 
that the air must be looked to and reformed. It is a 
fatal augury for a room that plants cannot be made 
to thrive in it. Plants should not turn pale, be long- 
jointed, long-leaved, and spindHng ; and where they 
grow in this way, we may be certain that there is a 
want of vitality for human beings. But where plants 
appear as they do in the open air, with vigorous, stocky 
growth, and short-stemmed, deep-green leaves, we may 
believe the conditions of that atmosphere are healthy 
for human lungs. 

It is pleasant to see how the custom of plant-grow- 
ing has spread through our country. In how many 
farm-house windows do we see petunias and nastur- 
tiums vivid with bloom while snows are whirling with- 



300 House and Home Papers. 

out, and how much brightness have those cheap en- 
joyments shed on the hves of those who cared for 
them ! We do not beheve fnere is a human being 
who would not become a passionate lover of plants, 
if circumstances ouce made it imperative to tend upon 
and watch the growth of one. The history of Picciola 
for substance has been lived over and over by many 
a man and woman who once did not know that there 
was a particle of plant-love in their souls. But to the 
proper care of plants in pots there are many hin- 
drances and drawbacks. The dust chokes the little 
pores of their green lungs, and they require constant 
showering ; and to carry all one's plants to a sink or 
porch for this purpose is a labor which many will not 
endure. Consequently plants often do not get a show- 
ering once a month ! We should try to imitate more 
closely the action of Mother Nature, who washes 
every green child of hers nightly with dews, which lie 
glittering on its leaves till morning. 

" Yes, there it is ! " said Jenny. " I think I could 
manage with plants, if it were not for this eternal 
showering and washing they seem to require to keep 
them fresh. They are always tempting one to spatter 
the carpet and surrounding furniture, which are not 
equally benefited by the libation." 

" It is partly for that very reason," I replied, " that 



Our House. 301 

the plan of ^ our house * provides for the introd^iction 
of Mother Earth, as you will see." 

A perfect house, according to my idea, should al- 
ways include in it a little compartment where plants 
can be kept, can be watered, can be defended from 
the dust, and have the sunshine and all the conditions 
of growth. 

People have generally supposed a conservatory to 
be one of the last trappings of wealth, — something 
not to be thought of for those in modest circumstances. 
But is this so ? You have a bow-window in your par- 
lor. Leave out the flooring, fill the space with rich 
earth, close it from the parlor by glass doors, and you 
have room for enough plants and flowers to keep you 
gay and happy all winter. If on the south side, where 
the sunbeams have power, it requires no heat but that 
which warms the parlor ; and the comfort of it is in- 
calculable, and the expense a mere trifle greater than 
that of the bow-window alone. 

In larger houses a larger space might be appro- 
priated in this way. We will not call it a conser- 
vatory, because that name suggests ideas of garden- 
ers, and mysteries of culture and rare plants, which 
bring all sorts of care and expense in their train. 
We would rather call it a greenery, a room floored 
with earth, with glass sides to admit the sun, — and 



302 House and Home Papers, 

let it open on as many other rooms of the house as 
possible. 

Why should not the dining-room and parlor be all 
winter connected by a spot of green and flowers, with 
plants, mosses, and ferns for the shadowy portions, 
and such simple blooms as petunias and nastur- 
tiums garlanding the sunny portion near the windows ? 
If near the water-works, this greenery might be en- 
livened by the play of a fountain, whose constant 
spray would give that softness to the air which is 
so often burned away by the dry heat of the fur- 
nace. 

" And do you really think, papa, that houses built 
in this way are a practical result to be aimed at?" 
said Jenny. "To me it seems like a dream of the 
Alhambra." 

" Yet I happen to have seen real people in our day 
living in just such a house," said I. "I could point 
you, this very hour, to a cottage, which in style of 
building is the plainest possible, which unites many 
of the best ideas of a true house. My dear, can 
you sketch the ground plan of that house we saw in 
Brighton ? " 

" Here it is," said my wife, after a few dashes with 
her pencil, — " an inexpensive house, yet one of the 
pleasantest I ever saw." 



Our House. 



303 



XoHSERVATo/^ly; 



/ lEARtOB, 



DiNINCk 
ROOM 



■*-0 



\ 



TTati ; 



i 



pi 



"Wash 

BOOM 



T KrXOHEN 

1 



X 



Cy China-closet /, Passage. </, Kitchen-closet 

"This cottage, which might, at the rate of prices 
before the war, have been built for five thousand dol- 
lars, has many of the requirements which I seek for 
a house. It has two stories, and a tier of very pleas- 
ant attic-rooms, two bathing-rooms, and the water 
carried into each story. The parlor and dining-room 
both look into a httle bower, where a fountain is ever 
playing into a little marble basin, and which all the 
year through has its green and bloom. It is heated 
simply from the furnace by a register, like any other 
room of the house, and requires no more care than a 
delicate woman could easily give. The brightness and 
cheerfulness it brings during our long, dreary winters is 
incredible." 



But one caution is necessary in all such appendages. 
The earth must be thorougly underdrained to prevent 



304 House and Home Papers. 

the vapors of stagnant water, and have a large admix- 
ture of broken charcoal to obviate the consequences 
of vegetable decomposition. Great care must be taken 
that there be no leaves left to fall and decay on the 
ground, since vegetable exhalations poison the air. 
With these precautions such a plot will soften and 
purify the air of a house. 

Where the means do not allow even so small a con- 
servatory, a recessed window might be fitted with a 
deep box, which should have a drain-pipe at the bot- 
tom, and a thick layer of broken charcoal and gravel, 
with a mixture of fine wood-soil and sand, for the top 
stratum. Here ivies may be planted, which will run 
and twine and strike their little tendrils here and there, 
and give the room in time the aspect of a bower ; the 
various greenhouse nasturtiums will make winter gor- 
geous with blossoms. In windows unblest by sun- 
shine — and, alas, such are many ! — one can cultivate 
ferns and mosses ; the winter-growing ferns, of which 
there are many varieties, can be mixed with mosses 
and woodland flowers. 

Early in February, when the cheerless frosts of winter 
seem most wearisome, the common blue violet, wood- 
anemone, hepatica, or rock-columbine, if planted in 
this way, will begin to bloom. The common partridge- 
berry, with its brilliant scarlet fruit and dark green 
leaves, will also grow finely in such situations, and 



Our House. 305 

have a beautiful effect. These things requiie daily 
showering to keep them fresh, and the moisture aris- 
ing from them will soften and freshen the too dry air 
of heated winter rooms. 

Thus I have been through my four essential ele- 
ments in house-building, — air, fire, water, and earth. 
I would provide for these before anything else. After 
they are secured, I would gratify my taste and fancy 
as far as possible in other ways. I quite agree with 
Bob in hating commonplace houses, and longing for 
some little bit of architectural effect; and I grieve 
profoundly that every step in that direction must 
cost so much. I have also a taste for niceness of 
finish. I have no objection to silver-plated door- 
locks and hinges, none to windows which are an 
entire plate of clear glass. I congratulate neighbors 
who are so fortunate as to be able to get them ; and 
after I have put all the essentials into a house, I would 
have these too, if I had the means. 

But if all my wood-work wera to be without groove 
or moulding, if my mantels were to be of simple wood, 
if my doors were all to be machine-made, and my 
lumber of the second quahty, I would have my bath- 
rooms, my conservatory, my sunny bow-windows, and 
my perfect ventilation ; and my house would then 
be so pleasant, and every one in it in such a cheerful 

T 



3o6 House and Home Papers. 

mood, that it would verily seem to be ceiled with 
cedar. 

Speaking of ceiling with cedar, I have one thing 
more to say. We Americans have a country abound- 
ing in beautiful timber, of whose beauties we know 
nothing, on account of the pernicious and stupid habit 
of covering it with white paint. 

The celebrated zebra-wood with its golden stripes 
cannot exceed in quaint beauty the grain of unpainted 
chestnut, prepared simply with a coat or two of oil. 
The butternut has a rich golden brown, the very dar- 
ling color of painters, — a shade so rich, and grain so 
beautiful, that it is of itself as charming to look at as 
a rich picture. The black-walnut, with its heavy depth 
of tone, works in well as an adjunct ; and as to oak, 
what can we say enough of its quaint and many shad- 
ings? Even common pine, which has been consid- 
ered not decent to look upon till hastily shrouded 
in a friendly blanket of white paint, has, when oiled 
and varnished, the beauty of satin-wood. The second 
quality of pine, which has what are called shakes in it, 
under this mode of treatment often shows clouds and 
veins equal in beauty to the choicest woods. The 
cost of such a finish is greatly less than that of the old 
method ; and it saves those days and weeks of cleaning 
which are demanded by white paint, while its general 
tone is softer and more harmonious. Experiments in 



Our House. 307 

color may be tried in the combination of these woods, 
which at small expense produce the most charming 
effects. 

As to paper-hangings, we are proud to say that our 
American manufacturers now furnish all that can be 
desired. There are some branches of design where 
artistic, ingenious France must still excel us ; but 
whoso has a house to fit up, let him first look at 
what his own country has to show, and he will be 
astonished. 

There is one topic in house-building on which I 
would add a few words. The difficulty of procuring 
and keeping good servants, which must long be one 
of our chief domestic troubles, warns us so to arrange 
our houses that we shall need as few as possible. 
There is the greatest conceivable difference in the 
planning and building of houses as to the amount of 
work which will be necessary to keep them in respect- 
able condition. Some houses require a perfect staff 
of house-maids ; — there are plated hinges to be 
rubbed, paint to be cleaned, with intricacies of mould- 
ing and carving which daily consume hours of dust- 
ing to preserve them from a slovenly look. Simple 
finish, unpainted wood, a general distribution of water 
through the dwelling, will enable a very large house to 
be cared for by one pair of hands, and yet maintain 
a creditable appearance. 



3o8 House and Home Papers. 

In kitchens one servant may perform the work of 
two by a close packing of all the conveniences for 
cooking and such arrangements as shall save time and 
steps. Washing-day may be divested of its terrors by 
suitable provisions for water, hot and cold, by wring- 
ers, which save at once the strength of the linen and 
of the laundress, and by drying-closets connected with 
ranges, where articles can in a few moments be per- 
fectly dried. These, with the use of a small mangle, 
such as is now common in America, reduce the labors 
of the laundry one half. 

There are many more things which might be said 
of "our house," and Christopher may, perhaps, find 
some other opportunity to say them. For the present 
his pen is tired and ceaseth. 



XII. 

HOME JRELIGION. 

IT was Sunday evening, and our little circle were 
convened by my study-fireside, where a crackling 
hickory fire proclaimed the fall of the year to be 
coming on, and cold weather impending. Sunday 
evenings, my married boys and girls are fond of com- 
ing home and gathering round the old hearthstone, 
and " making believe " that they are children again. 
We get out the old-fashioned music-books, and sing 
old hymns to very old tunes, and my wife and her 
matron daughters talk about the babies in the inter- 
vals; and we discourse of the sermon, and of the 
choir, and all the general outworks of good pious 
things which Sunday suggests. 

" Papa," said Marianne, " you are closing up youi 
House and Home Papers, are you not?" 

^' Yes, — I am come to the last one, for this yeai 
at least." 

" My dear," said my wife, " there is one subject 
you have n't touched on yet ; you ought not to close 
the year without it ; no house and home can be com* 
plete without Religion ; you should write a paper on 
Home Religion." 



310 House and Home Papers, 

My wife, as you may have seen in these papers, 
is an old-fashioned woman, something of a conserva- 
tive. I am, I confess, rather given to progress and 
speculation ; but I feel always as if I were going on 
in these ways with a string round my waist, and my 
wife's hand steadily pulling me back into the old 
paths. My wife is a steady, Bible-reading, Sabbath- 
keeping woman, cherishing the memory of her fathers, 
and loving to do as they did, — beheving, for the most 
part, that the paths well beaten by righteous feet are 
safest, even though much walking therein has worn 
away the grass and flowers. Nevertheless, she has an 
indulgent ear for all that gives promise of bettering 
anybody or anything, and therefore is not severe on 
any new methods that may arise in our progressive 
days of accomplishing old good objects. 

"There must be a home religion," said my wife. 

" I believe in home religion," said Bob Stephens, — 
"but not in the outward show of it. The best sort 
of religion is that which one keeps at the bottom of 
his heart, and which goes up thence quietly through 
all his actions, and not the kind that comes through 
a certain routine of forms and ceremonies. Do you 
suppose family prayers, now, and a blessing at meals, 
make people any better ? " 

"Depend upon it, Robert," said my wife, — she 
always calls him Robert on Sunday evenings, — " de- 



Home Religion, 311 

pend upon it, we are not so very much wiser than our 
fathers were, that we need depart from their good old 
ways. Of course I would have religion in the heart, 
and spreading quietly through the Hfe ; but does this 
interfere with those outward, daily acts of respect and 
duty which we owe to our Creator ? It is too much 
the slang of our day to decry forms, and to exalt 
the excellency of the spirit in opposition to them ; but 
tell me, are you satisfied with friendship that has none 
of the outward forms of friendship, or love that has 
none of the outward forms of love ? Are you satisfied 
of the existence of a sentiment that has no outward 
mode of expression ? Even the old heathen had their 
pieties ; they would not begin a feast without a liba- 
tion to their divinities, and there was a shrine in every 
well-regulated house for household gods." 

" The trouble with all these things," said Bob, " is 
that they get to be mere forms. I never could see 
that family worship amounted to much more in most 
Camilies." 

" The outward expression of all good things is apt 
to degenerate into mere form," said I, " The out- 
ward expression of social good feeling becomes a mere 
form ; but for that reason must we meet each other like 
oxen ? not say, ' (3ood morning/ or ' Good evening,' 
or * I am happy to see you ' ? Must we never use 
any of the forms of mutual good-will, except in those 



312 House and Home Papers. 

moments when we are excited by a real, present emo- 
tion? What would become of society? Forms are, 
so to speak, a daguerrotype of a past good feeling, 
meant to take and keep the impression of it when it 
is gone. Our best and most inspired moments are 
crystallized in them; and even when the spirit that 
created them is gone, they help to bring it back. 
Every one must be conscious that the use of the 
forms of social benevolence, even towards those who 
are personally unpleasant to us, tends to ameliorate 
prejudices. We see a man entering our door who is a 
weary bore, but we use with him those forms of civil- 
ity which society prescribes, and feel far kinder to 
him than if we had shut the door in his face, and said, 
*Go along, you tiresome fellow!' Now why does 
not this very obvious philosophy apply to better and 
higher feelings? The forms of religion are as much 
more necessary than the forms of politeness and social 
good-will as religion is more important than all other 
things." 

^' Besides," said my wife, " a form of worship, kept 
up from year to year in a family, — the assembling 
of parents and children for a few sacred moments 
each day, though it may be a form many times, 
especially in the gay and thoughtless hours of life. — 
often becomes invested with deep sacredness in times 
of trouble, or in those crises that rouse our deepei 



Home Religion. 313 

feelings. In sickness, in bereavement, in separation, 
(he daily prayer at home has a sacred and healing 
power. Then we remember the scattered and wander- 
ing ones ; and the scattered and wandering think 
tenderly of that hour when they know they are remem- 
bered. I know, when I was a young girl, I was often 
thoughtless and careless about family-prayers; but 
now that my father and mother are gone forever, 
there is nothing I recall more often. I remember the 
great old Family Bible, the hymn-book, the chair where 
father used to sit. I see him as he looked bending 
over that Bible more than in any other way; and 
expressions and sentences in his prayers which fell 
unheeded on my ears in those days have often come 
back to me like comforting angels. We are not aware 
of the influence things are having on us till we have 
left them far behind in years. When we have sum- 
mered and wintered them, and look back on them from 
changed times and other days, w€ find that they were 
making their mark upon us, though we knew it not." 

" I have often admired," said I, " the stateliness 
and regularity of family-worship in good old families 
in England, — the servants, guests, and children all 
assembled, — the reading of the Scriptures and the 
daily prayers by the master or mistress of the family, 
ending with the united repetition of the Lord's Prayei 
by all." 



314 House and Home Papers. 

" No such assemblage is possible in our country," 
said Bob. " Our servants are for the most part Ro- 
man CathoHcs, and forbidden by their religion to join 
with us in acts of worship." 

" The greater the pity," said I. *^ It is a pity that 
all Christians who can conscientiously repeat the 
Apostles' Creed and the Lord's Prayer together should 
for any reason be forbidden to do so. It would do 
more to harmonize our families, and promote good 
feeling between masters and servants, to meet once a 
day on the religious ground common to both, than 
many sermons on reciprocal duties." 

" But while the case is so," said Marianne, " we 
can't help it. Our servants cannot unite with us ; our 
daily prayers are something forbidden to them." 

"We cannot in this country," said I, "give to fam- 
ily prayer that solemn stateliness which it has in a 
country where religion is a civil institution, and mas- 
ters and servants, as a matter of course, belong to 
one church. Our prayers must resemble more a pri- 
i^ate interview with a father than a solemn act of 
homage to a king. They must be more intimate 
and domestic. The hour of family devotion should 
be the children's hour, — held dear as the interval 
when the busy^ father drops his business and cares, 
and, like Jesus of old, takes the little ones in his 
arms and blesses them. The child should remembex 



Home Religion. 315 

it as the time when the father always seemed most 
accessible and loving. The old family worship of 
New England lacked this character of domesticity and 
intimacy, — it was stately and formal, distant and 
cold ; but whatever were its defects, I cannot think 
it an improvement to leave it out altogether, as too 
many good sort of people in our day are doing. There 
may be practical religion where its outward daily 
forms are omitted, but there is assuredly no more of it 
for the omission. No man loves God and his neighbor 
less^ is a less honest and good man, for daily prayers 
in his household, — the chances are quite the other 
way ; and if the spirit of love rules the family hour, 
it may prove the source and spring of all that is 
good through the day. It seems to be a solemn duty 
in the parents thus to make the Invisible Father- 
hood real to their children, who can receive this idea 
at first only through outward forms and observances. 
The little one thus learns that his father has a Father 
in heaven, and that the earthly life he is living is on- 
ly a sacrament and emblem, — a type of the eternal 
life which infolds it, and of more lasting relations there. 
Whether, therefore, it be the silent grace and silent 
prayer of the Friends, or tne form of prayer of ritual 
churches, or the extemporaneous outpouring of those 
whose habits and taste lead them to extempore prayer, 
— in one of these ways there should be daily out 
ward and visible acts of worship in eveiy family." 



3i6 House and Home Papers, 

"Well, now," said Bob, "about this old question 
of Sunday-keeping, Marianne and I are much divided. 
I am always for doing something that she thinks is n't 
the thing." 

" Well, you see," said Marianne, " Bob is always 
talking against our old Puritan fathers, and saying all 
manner of hard things about them. He seems to 
think that all their ways and doings must of course 
have been absurd. For my part, I don't think we are 
in any danger of being too strict about anything. It 
appears to me that in this country there is a general 
tendency to let all sorts of old forms and observances 
float down-stream, and yet nobody seems quite to have 
made up his mind what shall come next." 

" The fact is," said I, " that we reaUze very fully 
all the objections and difficulties of the experiments 
in living that we have tried j but the difficulties in 
others that we are intending to try have not yet 
come to light. The Puritan Sabbath had great and 
very obvious evils. Its wearisome restraints and over- 
strictness cast a gloom on religion, and arrayed against 
the day itself the active prejudices that now are under- 
mining it and threatening its extinction. But it had 
great merits and virtues, and produced effects on 
society that we cannot well afford to dispense with. 
The clearing of a whole day from all possibilities of 
labor and amusement necessarily produced a grave 



Home Religion, 317 

and thoughtful people ; and a democrat'c republic 
can be carried on by no other. In lands which have 
Sabbaths of mere amusement, mere gala-days, repub 
lies rise and fall as fast as children's card-houses \ 
and the reason is, they are built by those whose poUt- 
ical and religious education has been childish. The 
common people of Europe have been sedulously nursed 
on amusements by the reigning powers, to keep them 
from meddling with serious matters ; their religion has 
been sensuous and sentimental, and their Sabbaths 
thoughtless holidays. The common people of New 
England are educated to think, to reason, to examine 
all questions of politics and religion for themselves ; 
and one deeply thoughtful day every week baptizes 
and strengthens their reflective and reasoning facul- 
ties. The Sunday schools of Paris are whirligigs 
where Young France rides round and round on little 
hobby-horses till his brain spins even faster than Na- 
ture made it to spin ; and when he grows up, his politi- 
cal experiments are as whirligig as his Sunday educa- 
tion. If I were to choose between the Sabbath of 
France and the old Puritan Sabbath, I should hold 
up both hands for the latter, with all its objection- 
able features." 

" Well," said my wife, " cannot we contrive to re- 
tain all that is really valuable of the Sabbath, and to 
ameliorate and smooth away what is forbidding ? " 



3i8 House and Home Papers, 

" That is the problem of our day," said I. " We do 
not want the Sabbath of Continental Europe : it does 
not suit democratic institutions ; it cannot be made 
even a quiet or a safe day, except by means of that ever- 
present armed police that exists there. If the Sabbath 
of America is simply to be a universal loafing, pic- 
nicking, dining-out day, as it is now with all our foreign 
population, we shall need what they have in Europe, 
the gendarmes at every turn,*to protect the fruit on our 
trees and the melons in our fields. People who live 
a little out from great cities see enough, and more than 
enough, of this sort of Sabbath-keeping, with our loose 
American police. 

" The fact is, our system of government was organ- 
ized to go by moral influences as much as mills by 
water, and Sunday was the great day for concentrat- 
ing these influences and bringing them to bear ; and 
we might just as well break down all the dams and let 
out all the water of the Lowell mills, and expect still 
to work the looms, as to expect to work our laws and 
constitution with European notions of religion. 

" It is true the Puritan Sabbath had its disagreeable 
points. So have the laws of Nature. They are of a 
most uncomfortable sternness and rigidity ; yet for all 
that, we would hardly join in a petition to have them 
repealed, or made wavering and uncertain for human 
convenience. We can bend to them in a thousand 
ways, and live ver)- comfortably under them." 



Home Religion, 319 

" But," said Bob, " Sabbath-keeping is the iron rod 
of bigots ; they don't allow a man any liberty of his 
own. One says it 's wicked to write a letter Sun- 
day ; another holds that you must read no book but 
the Bible ; and a third is scandalized, if you take a 
walk, ever so quietly, in the fields. There are all sorts 
of quips and turns. We may fasten things with pins 
of a Sunday, but it 's wicked to fasten with needle and 
thread, and so on, and so on ; and each one, planting 
himself on his own individual mode of keeping Sun- 
day, points his guns and frowns severely over the bat- 
tlements on his neighbors whose opinions and prac- 
tice are different from his." 

'-'- Yet," said I, " Sabbath-days are expressly men- 
tioned by Saint Paul as among those things concern- 
ing which no man should judge another. It seems 
to me that the error as regards the Puritan Sabbath 
was in representing it, not as a gift from God to man, 
but as a tribute of man to God. Hence all these hag- 
giings and nice questions and exactions to the utter- 
most farthing. The holy time must be weighed and 
measured. It must begin at twelve o'clock of one 
night, and end at twelve o'clock of another; and 
from beginning to end, the mind must be kept in a 
state of tension by the effort not to think any of its 
usual thoughts or do any of its usual works. The fact 
is, that the raetaphysical, defining, hair-splitting mind 



320 House and Home Papers, 

of New England, turning its whole powers on this 
one bit of ritual, this one only day of divine service, 
which was left of all the feasts and fasts of the old 
churches, made of it a thing straiter and stricter than 
ever the old Jews dreamed of 

" The old Jewish Sabbath entered only into the 
physical region, merely enjoining cessation from physi- 
cal toil. ' Thou shalt not labor nor do any work^ cov- 
ered the whole ground. In other respects than this it 
was a joyful festival, resembling, in the mode of keep- 
ing it, the Christmas of the modern Church. It was 
a day of social hilarity, — the Jewish law strictly for- 
bidding mourning and gloom during festivals. The 
people were commanded on feast-days to rejoice 
before the Lord their God with all their might. We 
fancy there were no houses where children were afraid 
to laugh, where the voice of social cheerfulness qua- 
vered away in terror lest it should awake a wrathful 
God. The Jewish Sabbath was instituted, in the ab- 
sence of printing, of books, and of all the advan- 
tages of literature, to be the great means of preserv- 
ing sacred history, — a day cleared from all possi- 
bility of other employment than social and family 
communion, when the heads of families and the elders 
of tribes might instruct the young in those religious 
traditions which have thus come down to us. 

"The Christian Sabbath is meant to supply the 



Home Religion, 321 

same moral need in that improved and higher state of 
society which Christianity introduced. Thus it was 
changed from the day representing the creation of 
the world to the resurrection-day of Him who came 
to make all things new. The Jewish Sabbath was 
buried with Christ in the sepulchre, and arose with 
Him, not a Jewish, but a Christian festival, still hold- 
ing in itself that provision for man's needs which the 
old institution possessed, but with a wider and more 
generous freedom of application. It was given to the 
Christian world as a day of rest, of refreshment, of 
hope and joy, — and of worship. The manner of 
making it such a day was left open and free to the 
needs and convenience of the varying circumstances 
and characters of those for whose benefit it was in- 
stituted.*' 

" Well," said Bob, " don't you think there is a deal 
of nonsense about Sabbath-keeping ? " 

" There is a deal of nonsense about everything 
human beings have to deal with," said I. 

"And," said Marianne, "how to find out what is 
nonsense ? " 

" By clear conceptions," said I, " of what the day 
is for. I should define the Sabbath as a divine and 
fatherly gift to man, — a day expressly set apart for 
the cultivation of his moral nature. Its object is not 
merely physical rest and recreation, but moral im- 
14* u 



522 House a7id Home Papers. 

provement The former are proper to the day only 
so far as they are subservient to the latter. The 
whole human race have the conscious need of being 
made better, purer, and more spiritual ; the whole 
human race have one common danger of sinking to a 
mere animal life under the pressure of labor or in the 
dissipations of pleasure ; and of the whole human race 
the proverb holds good, that what may be done any 
time is done at no time. Hence the Heavenly Father 
appoints one day as a special season for the culture of 
man's highest faculties. Accordingly, whatever ways 
and practices interfere with the purpose of the Sab- 
bath as a day of worship and moral culture should 
be avoided ; and all family arrangements for the day 
should be made with reference thereto." 

" Cold dinners on Sunday, for example," said Bob. 
" Marianne holds these as prime articles of faith." 

" Yes, — they doubtless are most worthy and merci- 
ful, in giving to the poor cook one day she may call 
her own, and rest from the heat of range and cooking- 
stove. For the same reason, I would suspend as far as 
possible all travelling, and all public labor, on Sunday. 
The hundreds of hands that these things require to 
carry them on are the hands of human beings, whose 
right to this merciful pause of rest is as clear as their 
humanity. Let them have their day to look upward." 

" But the little ones," said my oldest matron daugh- 



Home Religion, 323 

ter, who had not as yet spoken, — " they are the prob- 
lem. Oh, this weary labor of making children keep 
Sunday ! If I try it, I have no rest at all myself. If 
I must talk to them or read to them to keep them 
from play, my Sabbath becomes my hardest working- 
day." 

" And, pray, what commandment of the Bible ever 
said children should not play on Sunday?" said I. 
*^ We are forbidden to work, and we see the reason 
why; but lambs frisk and robins sing on Sunday; 
and little children, who are as yet more than half 
animals, must not be made to keep the day in the 
manner proper to our more developed faculties. As 
much cheerful, attractive religious instruction as they 
can bear without weariness may be given, and then 
they may simply be restrained from disturbing others. 
Say to the little one, — ' This day we have noble and 
beautiful things to think of that interest us deeply ; 
you are a child ; you cannot read and think and enjoy 
such things as much as we can ; you may play softly 
and quietly, and remember not to make a disturbance.' 
I would take a child to public worship at least once of 
a Sunday ; it forms a good habit in him. If the ser- 
mon be long and unintelligible, there are the little 
Sabbath-school books in every child's hands ; and while 
the grown people are getting what they understand, 
K^ho shall forbid a child's getting what is suited to 



324 House and Home Papers, 

him in a way that interests him and disturbs nobody ? 
The Sabbath school is the child's church ; and happily 
it is yearly becoming a more and more attractive insti- 
tution. I approve the custom of those who beautify 
the Sabbath school-room with plants, flowers, and 
pictures, thus making it an attractive place to the 
childish eye. The more this custom prevails, the 
more charming in after years will be the memories 
of Sunday. 

" It is most especially to be desired that the whole 
air and aspect of the day should be one of cheer- 
fulness. Even the new dresses, new bonnets, and 
new shoes, in which children delight of a Sunday, 
should not be despised. They have their value in 
marking the day as a festival; and it is better for 
the child to long for Sunday for the sake of his little 
new shoes than that he should hate and dread it as 
a period of wearisome restraint. All the latitude 
should be given to children that can be, consistently 
with fixing in their minds the idea of a sacred sea- 
son. I would rather that the atmosphere of the day 
should resemble that of a weekly Thanksgiving than 
that it should make its mark on the tender mind 
only by the memory of deprivations and restric- 
tions." 

"Well," said Bob, "here's Marianne always break- 
ing her heart about my reading on Sunday. Now I 



Home Religion. 325 

hold that what is bad on Sunday is bad on Monday, 
— and what is good on Monday is good on Sunday." 

"We cannot abridge other people's Uberty," said L 
"The generous, confiding spirit of Christianity has 
imposed not a single restriction upon us in reference 
to Sunday. The day is put at our disposal as a good 
Father hands a piece of money to his child : — ' There 
it is; take it and spend it well.' The child knows 
from his father's character what he means by spend- 
ing it well ; but he is left free to use his own judgment 
as to the mode. 

" If a man conscientiously feels that reading of this 
or that description is the best for him as regards his 
moral training and improvement, let him pursue it, 
and let no man judge him. It is difficult, with the 
varying temperaments of men, to decide what are or 
are not religious books. One man is more religiously 
impressed by the reading of history or astronomy than 
he would be by reading a sermon. There may be 
overwrought and wearied states of the brain and 
nerves which require and make proper the diversions 
of light literature 3 and if so, let it be used. The 
mind must have its recreations as well as the body." 

" But for children and young people," said my 
daughter, — " would you let them read novels on 
Sunday?" 

"That is exactly like asking. Would you let them 



326 House and Home Papers, 

talk with people on Sunday ? Now people are differ- 
ent; it depends, therefore, on who they are. Some 
are trifling and flighty, some are positively bad-prin- 
cipled, some are altogether good in their influence. 
So of the class of books called novels. Some are 
merely frivolous, some are absolutely noxious and 
dangerous, others again are written with a strong 
moral and religious purpose, and, being vivid and 
interesting, produce far more religious effect on the 
mind than dull treatises and sermons. The parables 
of Christ sufficiently establish the point that there is 
no inherent objection to the use of fiction in teaching 
religious truth. Good religious fiction, thoughtfully 
read, may be quite as profitable as any other reading." 

" But don't you think," said Marianne, " that there 
is danger in too much fiction ? " 

" Yes," said I. " But the chief danger of all that 
class of reading is its easiness^ and the indolent, care- 
less mental habits it induces. A great deal of the read- 
ing of youtig people on all days is really reading to no 
purpose, its object being merely present amusement 
It is a listless yielding of the mind to be washed over 
by a stream which leaves no fertilizing properties, and 
carries away by constant wear the good soil of thought. 
I should try to establish a barrier against this kind of 
reading, not only on Sunday, but on Monday, on Tues- 
day, and on all days. Instead, therefore, of objecting 



Home Religion, 327 

to any particular class of books for Sunday reading, 
I should say in general, that reading merely for 
pastime, without any moral aim, is the thing to be 
guarded against. That which inspires no thought, 
no purpose, which steals away all our strength and 
energy, and makes the Sabbath a day of dreams, is 
the reading I would object to. 

"So of music. I do not see the propriety of 
confining one's self to technical sacred music. Any 
grave, solemn, thoughtful, or pathetic music has a 
proper relation to our higher spiritual nature, whether 
it be printed in a church service-book or on secular 
sheets. On me, for example, Beethoven's Sonatas 
have a far more deeply religious influence than much 
that has religious names and words. Music is to be 
judged of by its effects.'* 

"Well," said Bob, "if Sunday is given for our own 
individual improvement, I for one should not go to 
church. I think I get a great deal more good in stay- 
ing at home and reading." 

"There are two considerations to be taken into 
account in reference to this matter of church-going," 
I replied. "One relates to our duty as members of 
society in keeping up the influence of the Sabbath, 
and causing it to be respected in the community ; the 
other, to the proper disposition of our time for our 
own moral improvement. As members of the corn- 



328 House and Home Papers, 

munity, we should go to church, and do all in out 
power to support the outward ordinances of religion. 
If a conscientious man makes up his mind that Sun- 
day is a day for outward acts of worship and rever- 
ence, he should do his own part as an individual 
towards sustaining these observances. Even though 
he may have such mental and moral resources that 
as an individual he could gain much more in solitude 
than in a congregation, still he owes to the congre- 
gation the influence of his presence and sympathy. 
But I have never yet seen the man, however finely 
gifted morally and intellectually, whom 1 thought in 
the long run a gainer in either of these respects by 
the neglect of public worship. I have seen many 
who in their pride kept aloof from the sympathies 
and communion of their brethren, who lost strength 
morally, and deteriorated in ways that made them- 
selves painfully felt. Sunday is apt in such cases to 
degenerate into a day of mere mental idleness and 
reverie, or to become a sort of waste-paper box for 
scraps, odds and ends of secular affairs. 

" As to those very good people — and many such 
there are — who go straight on with the work of life on 
Sunday, on the plea that " to labor is to pray," I sim- 
ply think they are mistaken. In the first place, to 
labor is not the same thing as to pray. It may some- 
times be as good a thing to do, and in some cases 



Home Religion. 329 

even a better thing ; but it is not the same thing. A 
man might as well never write a letter to his wife on 
the plea that making money for her is writing to her. 
It may possibly be quite as great a proof of love to 
work for a wife as to write to her, but few wives would 
not say that both were not better than either alone. 
Furthermore, there is no doubt that the intervention 
of one day of spiritual rest and aspiration so refreshes 
a man's whole nature, and oils the many wheels of 
existence, that he who allows himself a weekly Sab- 
bath does more work in the course of his hfe for the 
omission of work on that day. 

*^ A young student in a French college, where the 
examinations are rigidly severe, found by experi- 
ence that he succeeded best in his examination by 
allowing one day of entire rest just before it. His 
brain and nervous system refreshed in this way carried 
him through the work better than if taxed to the 
last moment. There are men transacting a large 
and complicated business who can testify to the same 
influence from the repose of the Sabbath. 

"I believe those Christian people who from con- 
science and principle turn their thoughts most entirely 
out of the current of worldly cares on Sunday fulfil 
unconsciously a great law of health ; and that, whether 
their moral nature be thereby advanced or not, their 
brain will work more healthfully and actively for it 



330 House and Home Papers. 

even in physical and worldly matters. It is because 
the Sabbath thus harmonizes the physical and moral 
laws of our being, that the injunction concerning it is 
placed among the ten great commandments, each of 
which represents some one of the immutable needs of 
humanity. 

" There is yet another point of family religion that 
ought to be thought of," said my wife : " I mean the 
customs of mourning. If there is anything that ought 
to distinguish Christian families from Pagans, it should 
be their way of looking at and meeting those inev- 
itable events that must from time to time break the 
family chain. It seems to be the peculiarity of Chris- 
tianity to shed hope on such events. And yet it 
seems to me as if it were the very intention of many 
of the customs of society to add tenfold to their gloom 
and horror, — such swathings of black crape, such 
funereal mufflings of every pleasant object, such dark- 
ening of rooms, and such seclusion from society and 
giving up to bitter thoughts and lamentation. How 
can little children that look on such things believe 
that there is a particle of truth in all they hear about 
the joyous and comforting doctrines which the Bible 
holds forth for such times?" 

" That subject is a difficult one," I rejoined. " Na 
ture seems to indicate a propriety in some outward 
expressions of grief when we lose our friends. All 



Home Religion, 331 

nations agree in these demonstrations. In a certain 
degree they are soothing to sorrow; they are the 
language of external hfe made to correspond to the 
internal. Wearing mourning has its advantages. It 
is a protection to the feelings of the wearer, for 
whom it procures sympathetic and tender considera- 
tion ; it saves grief from many a hard jostle in the 
ways of life ; it prevents the necessity of many a try- 
ing explanation, and is the ready apology for many 
an omission of those tasks to which sorrow is unequal. 
For all these reasons I never could join the cru- 
sade which some seem disposed to wage against it 
Mourning, however, ought not to be continued for 
years. Its uses are more for the first few months 
of sorrow, when it serves the mourner as a safeguard 
from intrusion, insuring quiet and leisure, in which 
to reunite the broken threads of life, and to gather 
strength for a return to its duties. But to wear 
mourning garments and forego society for two or three 
years after the loss of any friend, however dear, I 
cannot but regard as a morbid, unhealthy nursing of 
sorrow, unworthy of a Christian." 

"And yet," said my wife, "to such an unhealthy 
degree does this custom prevail, that I have actually 
known young girls who have never worn any other 
dress than mourning, and consequently never been 
into society, during the entire period of their girlhood. 



332 House and Home Papers, 

First, the death of a father necessitated three years 
of funereal garments and abandonment of social rela- 
tions ; then the death of a brother added two years 
more ; and before that mourning was well ended, an- 
other of a wide circle of relatives being taken, the 
habitual seclusion was still protracted. What must a 
child think of the Christian doctrine of life and death, 
who has never seen life except through black crape ? 
We profess to believe in a better life to which the 
departed good are called, — to believe in the shortness 
of our separation, the certainty of reunion, and that 
all these events are arranged in all their relations by 
an infinite tenderness which cannot err. Surely, Chris- 
tian funerals too often seem to say that affliction 
" cometh of the dust," and not from above. 

" But," said Bob, " after all, death is a horror ; you 
can make nothing less of it. You can't smooth it 
over, nor dress it with flowers ; it is what Nature shud- 
ders at" 

" It is precisely for this reason," said I, *' that Chris- 
tians should avoid those customs which aggravate 
and intensify this natural dread. Why overpower the 
senses with doleful and funereal images in the hour of 
weakness and bereavement, when the soul needs all 
her force to rise above the gloom of earth, and 
to realize the mysteries of faith? Why shut the 
friendly sunshine from the mourner's room? Why 



Home Religion. 333 

muffle in a white shroud every picture that speaks a 
cheerful household word to the eye? Why make a 
house look stiff and ghastly and cold as a corpse ? In 
some of our cities, on the occurrence of a death in 
the family, all the shutters on the street are closed 
and tied with black crape, and so remain for months. 
What an oppressive gloom must this bring on a house ! 
how like the very shadow of death ! It is enlisting the 
nerves and the senses against our religion, and making 
more difficult the great duty of returning to life and 
its interests. I would have flowers and sunshine in 
the deserted rooms, and make them symbolical of 
the cheerful mansions above, to which our beloved 
ones are gone. Home ought to be so religiously 
cheerful, so penetrated by the life of love and hope 
and Christian faith, that the other world may be 
made real by it. Our home life should be a type 
of the higher life. Our home should be so sancti- 
fied, its joys and its sorrows so baptized and hal- 
lowed, that it shall not be sacrilegious to think 
of heaven as a higher form of the same thing, — a 
Father's house in the better country, whose man- 
sions are many, whose love is perfect, whose joy is 
eternal." 



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